‘Hmh?’
‘He said he didn’t want to mislead you, but he keeps picking up odd references to somebody called Gringo.’
‘Gringo? That doesn’t mean anything to me. In connection with what?’
‘Well, in connection with all of this Fidel Castro business.’
David shrugged. ‘Maybe Gringo’s some kind of go-between. Maybe Zucker’s been carrying on secret negotiations with Castro; free elections in exchange for financial aid. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to make very much sense. Ask your friend if Cuba’s going to be withdrawn from Comecon at the same time.’
Esther made another note. ‘Are you still flying back to Washington on Wednesday?’ she asked him.
‘As far as I know. That’s as long as Helen doesn’t make any undue fuss over the house.’
Helen was David Daniels’ second wife. At the age of 41, he was about to be divorced for the second time. The official reason was incompatibility; the real reason was David’s casual but unending enthusiasm for pretty girls. He had even squired the President’s daughter Janie at one time. Helen could have cited Esther; she and David had made love in a ski-lodge at Aspen early this year; and again, only four or five weeks ago, at The Pilgrim’s Inn in Salem, Massachusetts. They were not regular lovers, however, and never could have been. Their interests in life were too disparate. Esther was interested in political philosophy and saving whales and making early-American comforters. David was interested in David. Now that Helen had gone, his self-interest had become almost total. George Roth, the senior senator, called him ‘The Capitol’s answer to Vidal Sassoon’.
David kissed Esther, lightly, on the lips, and then led her to the front door with his arm around her waist. ‘I’ll put out a few exploratory feelers myself. You remember Jimmy Mocarelli, down in Phoenix? He’s closely tied in with all those rich Cuban exiles there; he may know something that helps to put a frame around this particular painting.’
Esther’s red Datsun ZX was parked under the shade of the rustling oaks that screened David’s house from the road that led northwards to New Canaan. David opened the door for her, and waved as she drove off. Then he went back into the house, and through to his library; cool, venetian-blinded, with cubist sculptures standing against bare white walls.
He picked up the phone, and punched out the number of The Washington Post. When the call was answered, he asked to be put through to Jack Levy on the city desk.
‘Jack? David Daniels. Yes. I’m at home, in Connecticut. Well, that’s right, it’s going through next month. Listen, Jack, I want you to do me a small favour, usual terms. I’ve had a tip-off from C Street that something interesting may be going on in Cuba. That’s right. Well, nothing short of a free election. Well, no, I don’t have any authentication whatever. It’s a heavy-duty rumour at the moment, that’s all. But it may be connected with something else that’s going on, something better-documented, and that is that Communist insurgents in Central America are beginning to put down their weapons and come on in. Did you hear anything about that? Well, no, me neither. But it’s supposed to be true. Then there’s one more thing. Just a name: Gringo. You ever heard that name, Gringo? Could be a code-name, like Deep Throat. Could be a man, could be an operation, who knows. But start on C Street, then try some of those contacts of yours in the Pentagon. Okay. Well, I’m flying back Wednesday. Well, it depends. Okay, then. Take care.’
He put down the phone. As he did so, a fat-bellied man who was sitting on the opposite side of the New Canaan road in a ’74 Thunderbird put down the earphones of his telephone equipment, too; and the cassette tape-deck on the seat beside him clicked automatically to a stop.
David padded back to his gym. He still had twenty minutes to go on the exercise-cycle, at the end of which time his efforts, had his bicycle not been stationary, would have taken him at least 30 miles all the way to Fairfield. The fat man in the Thunderbird, breathing asthmatically, dialled a mobile number, and said, ‘Hatchet? This is Bird. We were right about our friend. You got it. We have another friend, too. Well, we can deal with him later. All right. I’ll leave it to you.’
*
The fifth crucial message that morning was received by telephone at a small pink-washed house in the village of Arendsee, in the province of Altmark, in East Germany, close to the West German border. The phone rang and rang for almost three minutes before a short, powerfully-built man came into the sparsely-furnished living-room and answered it.
‘Doch?’ he said. He wore a checked shirt and light green corduroy trousers. He could have been anything from a game-keeper to a farm labourer. Only the pallor of his face gave away the fact that he spent most of his time out of the sun, in dark and shadowy places.
‘Is that Arendsee 58 00 43?’ said a muffled voice. It sounded as if the caller had a scarf or a handkerchief over the mouthpiece.
The man drew back the net curtains at the window, and looked out over the marshy reaches of Arendsee itself, reflecting the blue-grey sky like polished slate. Two small boys on bicycles rode through the yellowish grass; an Army lorry whinnied past.
‘Who wishes to know?’ the man inquired, after a pause. His eyes were as vacant as the lake of slate.
‘Der scheckiger Pfeifer sent me. He said he had trouble getting rid of a rat.’
‘What colour?’
‘White.’
The man let the net curtain fall back again. ‘It isn’t so easy this time of year. What’s he prepared to pay?’
‘Ten.’
‘Not enough. I’m afraid.’
‘Twelve, then.’
‘Twelve-five.’
‘Very well. When, and where?’
The man paused for a while, and then asked, ‘Where is your rat located?’
‘Wünsdorf.’
‘Can you bring it any closer?’
‘It’s possible. The day after tomorrow I have to be in Haldensleben, I could bring her there.’
‘You can’t manage any closer than that?’
‘It’s impossible.’
Another lengthy pause. Then, ‘All right. Bring your rat to Haldensleben the day after tomorrow. As soon as you arrive, call Magdeburg 67 23 01. Tell them again that you were sent by the scheckiger Pfeifer. They will give you instructions on what to do. Oh – and make sure you bring the money in cash. What number did the scheckiger Pfeifer give you?’
‘Nine.’
‘Very well. We will wait to hear from you.’
‘Auf wiederhören,’ said the voice on the end of the phone.
The man said nothing, but put the phone down, took out a handkerchief, and loudly blew his nose.
Another man came into the room, thinner, with near-together eyes.
‘Was that him?’ he asked.
The stocky man wiped his nose from side to side, and nodded. ‘Marshal of the Soviet Union T.K. Golovanov, in person.’
Nine
The Tivoli gardens sparkled with lights and music as Charles weaved his way through the crowds towards the ferris wheel. He was already five minutes late. Agneta had insisted he ate a sandwich before he went, wheatmeal bread and Danish Blue cheese, to soak up some of the alcohol. The sandwich had taken him almost ten minutes to eat, because he had no saliva, and it was still working its way painfully down towards his stomach like an unoiled lift descending a condemned building.
Jeppe was already there, smoking. Standing next to him, dwarfish and hunched, was Otto Glistrup. Otto was the second-best bagman in Copenhagen. He personally considered that he was the best. Jeppe had personally rehabilitated him from a life of safe-breaking and bank computer frauds, and now the Danish intelligence services kept him reasonably busy all the year round. His only problems were his vanity, and his monotonous, endless, obsession with his ugly wife, and how much she mistreated him.
Charles shook hands with Jeppe, and then with Otto. ‘How are you doing, Mr Glistrup? I haven’t seen you in a long time.’
‘I’ve been away,’ said Otto, in a nasal voice. �
��Hedvig was ill and insisted I take her to stay with her sister in Lolland. Five months we were there, and every time I suggested going back to Copenhagen, she had a relapse. “Oh, my poor sinuses, I can’t go back to Copenhagen, too much dust from the lime trees.” I had to promise her a new winter coat to get her back, and still she complains, and sneezes, and complains.’
Charles took Otto’s arm, and together the three of them walked slowly around the gardens, between the flowerbeds lit with green and white stars of light, and along the tree-lined avenues. Somewhere close, a promenade orchestra was playing the Radetzky March, and Jeppe hummed, ‘diddle-dum, diddle-dum, diddle dum-dum-dum!’
Charles said to Otto, ‘I want to get into somebody’s computer.’
‘Well,’ nodded Otto, his face as sharp as a weasel. ‘I can do that for you, depending on how cleverly the computer has been protected from outside interference, but you don’t need me for such a job. A computer can be broken into just as easily from the outside, what do you want with a break-and-entry man? There are far better computer people than me. Try Peder Staffeldt, he’s half my age. He can gain access to your computer from his own bedroom.’
‘The information we require may not be stored in the computer,’ said Charles. ‘We want you to go through the files first.’
‘What kind of an establishment are we talking about?’ asked Otto. ‘I charge double for embassies, you know; three times for Middle Eastern embassies; and I won’t do any Libyan building at all.’
‘It’s nothing like that,’ Charles reassured him, putting his arm confidentially around Otto’s twisted shoulder-blades. ‘It’s an architect’s office, that’s all, here in Copenhagen. Klarlund & Christensen, just across the road. No special security, nothing to worry about at all.’
‘The last time somebody told me there was nothing to worry about, I had all the fingers in my left hand broken.’
‘Believe me,’ said Charles, ‘all the security problems have already been dealt with.’
Otto was silent for a while. Charles and Jeppe glanced at each other over the top of his head. Jeppe gave Charles a wink which obviously meant that Otto would agree.
‘My wife wouldn’t approve,’ said Otto. ‘She says I shouldn’t work for people like you; it’s too dangerous. She says I’m going to kill her one day, from blood-pressure.’
‘Well, Otto, we all have to go sometime,’ said Charles. ‘You know, life is just like boating on the lake. Sooner or later, they call out your number, and say, “Time’s up, my friend.” You know that, as well as I do.’
Otto didn’t answer. They came to an ice-cream stand, and Charles bought them each a vanilla cone, with chocolate flakes. They walked underneath the trees licking their icecreams as if they were three small boys planning a daring prank.
‘I can’t do it tomorrow,’ said Otto. ‘Nor the next day; my wife’s brother is coming over from Fyn.’
‘Is there anything wrong with tonight?’ asked Charles.
‘Tonight? With no preparation?’
‘What do you need?’
‘Well, nothing much. Just my tools.’
‘Where are your tools?’
‘In the back of my car.’
‘And where’s your car?’
‘In the multi-storey on Vesterport.’
Charles squeezed him enthusiastically. ‘In that case, there’s no problem, is there? Shall we go take a look at the office?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Otto. Then he suddenly stared at his ice-cream. ‘Why am I eating this ice-cream? I hate ice-cream.’ He dropped the cone into a litter-bin.
They crossed the wide pedestrian bridge which spans the southern end of Tivoli’s lake, and the lights from the pleasure-park dipped and sparkled in the dark water. Then they made their way back to Vesterbrogade, and along to Banegårdspladsen. They stopped opposite the offices of Klarlund & Christensen, and Charles said, ‘There you are. The whole place is in darkness. Standard alarm system, as far as I could see. Standard locks. No problems at all. You could be in and out of there in ten minutes flat.’
Charles cleared his throat, and then smiled at Otto as if he were a real-estate agent showing him a particularly desirable family home in New Rochelle. ‘Can’t you just imagine yourself and Mrs Glistrup and all the little Glistrups on the lawn in summer? Oh, I beg your pardon, no little Glistrups? Well, never mind; more peaceful for both of you.’
Otto looked the building up and down. ‘I’ll have to get closer. Can I get closer?’
‘No reason why not. They don’t have any security guards.’
The three of them crossed the street. Jeppe kept a look out for police patrols while Otto crouched down beside the glass front door of Klarlund & Christensen, and examined the lock. After a while, Otto stood up, and frowned at the brushed-steel surround of the entire office façade, sucking at his front teeth from time to time. The lights of Vesterbrogade were reflected in the plate-glass, a world within a world.
‘Well?’ asked Charles, impatiently.
‘The locks are easy. I’m not so sure about the alarms. They have the usual electromagnetic sensors, and I expect they have an infra-red beam across the lobby somewhere. But, I don’t know. I’m not so sure about this. It doesn’t feel good.’
Jeppe said, ‘Are you going to do it, or not?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Otto. ‘I need more time. I’d like to see a plan of this building, maybe find out who installed the alarms, and see if I can’t get hold of a diagram.’
Charles said, ‘How long will that take?’
‘Well, it depends. Six or seven weeks, maybe.’
‘I don’t think we can wait that long,’ said Charles.
‘Jobs like these, you can’t hurry.’
Charles said to Jeppe, ‘What’s it going to take to persuade this dwarf that we need to get into this building as soon as possible?’
Jeppe said, ‘Come on, Otto. This isn’t so difficult. How many times have you done a job like this before?’
‘I don’t know,’ Otto repeated. ‘It just seems wrong. I don’t know what it is, but something’s wrong.’
‘Do you think you can get into the building without triggering the alarm?’ asked Charles.
Otto shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you what makes me suspicious. They have an adequate alarm system, as far as I can make out from a superficial inspection like this, but it’s nothing like foolproof. Now, who would spend money on an alarm system that isn’t foolproof, unless they already have a back-up alarm which is completely impregnable? You see that box there? Those light housings over on the floor there? They may be real alarms, but they’re a decoy. These people have a far better alarm system; something that really keeps people away. They may even have booby-traps.’
‘In an architect’s office?’ asked Jeppe, sceptically.
‘My dear Jeppe,’ said Otto, without turning round. ‘Whatever one man is interested in stealing, another man is interested in keeping safe. I don’t know what it is that you expect to find here. You know me, Jeppe, I never ask any questions. But if it is valuable enough for you to want it so bad, then it must be valuable enough for these people to protect in the most sophisticated way they can think of. There are visible alarms here, what we call frighteners. An amateur will think twice about breaking in when he sees them. But they are also a warning to the professional like me, for it is obvious that they are not one hundred per cent. They are a subtle message that if I do try to break in, then I shall find myself in deep trouble.’
‘So what do we do?’ Charles demanded.
‘We don’t do anything,’ Otto replied. ‘Not without weeks of proper investigation and surveillance, not without sending people here in the daytime to check out the controls, not without learning this building’s alarm system inside and out.’
Charles said, ‘The trouble is, Otto, we really would like to know what’s going on here now. I mean, tonight.’
Otto pouted, and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Krogh. I can’t do
anything for you tonight. It just isn’t my way of working. I’m not a burglar any more. I’m a professional.’
Charles appealed to Jeppe. ‘Jeppe, tell him he has to.’
‘You have to,’ said Jeppe.
Otto stared at Jeppe, and then turned his head around and stared at Charles. ‘I hope you don’t mean that seriously, Jeppe,’ he said, at last.
‘I mean it seriously, Otto. You have to.’
‘If you don’t,’ put in Charles, ‘I’m going to have your lily-livered guts for breakfast, with a side order of cottage fries.’
Otto looked up at the Klarlund & Christensen building with deep unhappiness. ‘I suppose this is some kind of headquarters,’ he said.
‘Not that we happen to be aware of,’ said Charles.
‘Well, for headquarters, I charge time-and-a-half,’ said Otto.
‘That’s all right,’ said Jeppe. ‘If it turns out to be some kind of headquarters, any kind, you’ll get time-and-a-half. Guaranteed, with the royal seal of Margrethe II.’
‘In that case,’ said Otto, ‘it seems to me that we will have to be as unsubtle as these alarms are subtle. Can you Somehow find me an old car? Big and heavy, maybe American. But it must still run.’
‘I think we can oblige,’ said Jeppe. ‘I’ll call Birkers, on Nørre Farimagsgade. They’ve usually got a selection of old motors.’
‘All right, then,’ said Otto. ‘While you do that. I’ll go and collect my tools.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Charles told Jeppe. ‘I’ll go with him. Every step of the way.’
They walked to the multi-storey car park on Vesterport. Charles rubbed his hands briskly; the May night was growing chilly. The clock on top of the Rådhus proclaimed that it was already eleven o’clock, and a north-easterly wind was blowing from Sweden. Otto said, ‘I shouldn’t do this, you know. It’s against my better instincts.’
‘What, are you chicken?’ asked Charles. ‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’
‘I lost my sense of adventure about six weeks after I married Hedvig.’
Charles followed Otto up the stairs of the car park, until they reached the second level. Otto’s Saab was parked in a dark corner. He opened up the boot and took out a blue nylon sports bag.
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