The Ears of a Cat

by Roderick Hart

  ‘You have his address?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was about to tell them what it was when the door was flung open and a man entered at speed, alarm written all over his face.

  ‘Howard Sargeson MD, director of this facility. And you are?’

  Mathieson tried to calm him but Sargeson was a worried man.

  ‘Reception informs me there is some question of an epidemic.’

  Breitenbach smiled. ‘I’m based at the Epidemic Intelligence Centres. That’s the extent of it. We have no concern about your excellent clinic.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that.’

  Breitenbach was sure he could if he tried. It was obvious to her that in the event of adverse publicity, a clinic which made a fortune from wealthy guests would take a hit.

  Reassured, Sargeson excused himself and left, and in an effort to oil the wheels, Mathieson offered Pearson an apology he didn’t mean.

  ‘We realise we don’t find you in the best shape right now so we’re sorry we have to pose such questions at this time.’

  Pearson’s soft soap detector reacted at once.

  ‘Right you are, Agent Mathieson; what else do you want to know?’

  ‘We’re anxious to trace this Saito woman.’

  ‘She’s disappeared?’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘Can’t help you there, I’m afraid. But with your resources it won’t be long.’

  53

  ‘Something may have happened at the US end.’

  Lang looked at him thoughtfully. Not only did Vogt have a dog as big as a pony, he could state the obvious too.

  ‘So contact Pearson; find out what he knows.’

  ‘He won’t tell me. To him I’m a bottom feeder.’

  Lang sighed, something she was good at.

  ‘You really must show more confidence in yourself, Werner, whether you feel it or not. You’ll find that people will take you at whatever value you place upon yourself, however inflated it may be.’

  This was too much for Vogt, who replied with an audible sneer.

  ‘That way lies success.’

  Lang smiled sweetly back. ‘It worked for Dieter Klein.’

  ‘You should see him now.’

  Yet when he contacted Pearson in an assumed confident tone, Pearson astonished him by apologising. He was sorry about his lack of contact over the last few weeks; he’d been subject to an unprovoked assault which had left him requiring emergency surgery and a period of recuperation in a private clinic. Since it had no bearing on the discussion, he didn’t divulge the nature of the attack.

  ‘How are you now?’

  ‘Pretty much fully recovered. Heading back to Berlin tomorrow.’

  He’d decided to leave the United States before the Mathiesons of this world tightened the screw even further.

  ‘Did you recognise your attacker, Herr Pearson?’

  Pearson laughed dryly, still embarrassed that he’d been seen off by someone so slight.

  ‘Gina Saito.’

  Given the little he knew of Saito, Vogt was amazed.

  ‘Now in custody, I take it.’

  ‘Unfortunately not; she appears to have vanished off the face of the earth. To be fair, I’d gained entry to her apartment at the time in the hope of persuading her to cooperate. She’ll be lying low for now.’

  Vogt was overcome by an unpleasant thought: what was the nature of the cooperation Pearson had hoped for, intelligence gathering or sexual intercourse? Coercion being alien to his nature, it didn’t occur to him that it might have been both.

  ‘In any case, we can assume she knows who I am now, or at the very least that some agency or other is onto her, so I would advise reviewing her recent messages. I have the feeling something’s going down but I’m not sure what.’

  The fact that he knew very well was neither here nor there; let someone else take the strain for a change. And Vogt, privileged to have been taken into the confidence of an experienced agent like Pearson, ignored the strictures of Liesl von Eschwege and her legal department, took Pearson’s advice and discovered that Saito, on her way from her visit to Munoz, had sent a short message to Catherine Cooper. The balloon’s gone up.

  Cooper was in her apartment when it arrived. As was her custom, she referred the matter to Schnucki, asking him what the message might mean. But he didn’t know either. Increasingly, Cooper had come to suspect that Schnucki didn’t know very much. Not that she liked him any less for that. As if he was taking it all in, he heard her out without complaint, his ears twitching as she talked. Which, when she came to think of it, was more than her husband’s had ever done.

  Unsure which balloon Saito was referring to, Cooper asked for more information. When her request went unanswered, she forwarded the message to the others with the stark note that Saito had gone to ground. She had no idea that thanks to those clever people who’d come up with RCIS 2.0, the list of others she had notified now included Ursula Lang and Werner Vogt, both of whom could read Saito’s every word. But like Catherine Cooper and Schnucki before them, what the message referred to wasn’t totally clear to them either.

  ‘So what do we do, Frau Lang?’

  Two rungs higher up the ladder, she would have to answer this question.

  ‘Leave it with me, Werner. We don’t have enough to go on yet.’

  She retired to her office, despite her addition of potted plants still an alien environment, and reviewed the file. One name stood out. Though not a lover of the telephone, she picked it up.

  ‘Breitenbach.’

  ‘Ursula Lang, we met in Parndorf.’

  Lang had just heard about Pearson’s stay in the Riverside Clinic but hadn’t known the nature of the damage. Knowing Pearson as she did, she liked to think he’d brought it on himself. She also learned of Saito’s trip to Burkina Faso with Charles Ventris. Most significant to her was confirmation of what she already thought, that the variant H7N9 stolen from Parndorf had made its way across the water to Los Angeles. But Breitenbach learned something too.

  ‘Earlier today, Pearson told my colleague that he’s flying back here tomorrow. I’ll question him face-to-face when he arrives. After all, he’s still on the payroll.’

  But given what she knew of Pearson’s recent activities, Breitenbach felt that letting him leave the United States would not be a good idea. He had to know more than he admitted. Mathieson agreed. His investigation was still ongoing, but Pearson’s working methods left much to be desired. As did his attitude. He’d clearly decided to skip the country before they paid him another visit. As for the group Pearson and his BND colleagues had been investigating, it was time to bring the whole sorry business to a head, round these people up and interrogate both them and their technology.

  So it was that when Pearson, much recovered and in upbeat mood, presented his boarding pass at check-in, he was astonished to be escorted from the line and led to an interview suite by two officers of Customs and Border Protection. A third man, in a light summer suit, was standing by the back wall, presumably the official they would defer to in deciding his fate.

  ‘What’s going on here; what’s this about?’

  Though Adalbert Pearson was a man who knew the ropes, he’d failed to notice four additional letters on his pass, though they were evident if he’d looked. SSSS. According to the Transportation Security Administration, he’d been listed for Secondary Security Screening Selection. To detain him as he attempted to leave the country, Leonard Mathieson, not without a frisson of pleasure at the humour of it, had added Pearson’s name to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s Do Not Board list.

  ‘Well, the thing of it is, Mr Pearson, you’ve been identified as a person likely to harbour, let me see now,’ the officer checked his screen, ‘a communicable disease constituting a public health hazard, in th
is case, avian flu.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I’m perfectly healthy. Stick a thermometer up my ass if you like. I definitely do not have a temperature.’

  The man in the suit stepped forward into the room; he had an issue with that.

  ‘Come now, Mr Pearson, you’ve been round the block a few times. A man of your experience must have learned by now that there is nothing in existence which does not have a temperature. Which surely includes you. Unless you intend to claim that you don’t exist, a claim you couldn’t make unless you did.’

  54

  To avoid alarming the student body, it should be done discreetly, so Werner Vogt liaised with Herr Doktor Professor Hofmann, which proved to be a painful process.

  ‘While I appreciate your desire for discretion, Herr Vogt, I remain concerned that the activities of Frau Cooper, whatever they might be, should somehow bring our faculty into disrepute. An officer of the BND would hardly be interested in this lady over an unpaid parking ticket.’

  ‘She doesn’t drive.’

  ‘Ah, you appear to know more about her than I do.’

  About to say that wouldn’t be difficult, Vogt opted for something more bland.

  ‘So it would appear.’

  But he conceded the point which, even in academic circles, was surely beyond dispute. Yes, the matter was serious, and Hofmann agreed to invite Cooper to his office the following morning.

  ‘Do come in, Frau Cooper,’ he said, indicating a chair on the other side of his desk. Cooper noticed the second chair but thought no more about it.

  ‘I trust the day finds you well.’

  It did.

  ‘As you know, there is always a balance to be struck between the research and the lecturing activities of our staff here at the Free University. But it goes without saying that our lecturers must have a certain cachet, best burnished through the publication of papers in the learnéd journals. Now,’ he said, looking at a list he had drawn up himself the night before, ‘in your first years with us you were rather more active in this regard than you have been of late.’

  Cooper was unsurprised by the professor’s comment; it was demonstrably true.

  ‘I currently have a paper out for peer review.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear that. Journal?’

  ‘The Atlantic Review of Population Geography.’

  The professor looked anxiously at his watch, which was odd; he was hardly due to be elsewhere at a time he had chosen himself.

  ‘Subject?’

  ‘The Global Decline in Non-numeric Fertility References (1987-2012). Simply put, the emphasis is on the categorisation of evidence from a gender standpoint.’

  Despite of, or because of, the letters after his name, the professor was none the wiser and entirely forgot that the meeting was a pretext, nothing more, the reference to gender reawakening his long-held suspicion that Cooper might be a militant member of the women’s movement.

  ‘I would appreciate a sight of the abstract.’

  Cooper had just agreed to provide it when Werner Vogt entered the office and sat down in the empty chair beside her.

  ‘Apologies for my late arrival.’

  His dog had vomited on the carpet as he was about to leave home. This had happened before. According to his veterinarian, it might well indicate a delaying tactic: Theo did not want to be left alone. But there was no way he was going to admit any of this.

  ‘My preferred route was closed. Road traffic accident.’

  ‘Allow me to introduce Herr Vogt. As you may be aware, Frau Cooper specialises in population geography.’

  Vogt smiled at Cooper and showed her his ID.

  ‘An area in which you might be said to have designs. Fellow officers are currently searching your apartment. You will know why.’

  Cooper was gripped by panic, a sudden desire to leap to her feet and dash from the room. But Vogt was a tall young man, clearly fit, and no doubt there were other officers outside.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t.’

  She looked away from him, her gaze settling on a row of filing cabinets graced by a single succulent, a prime specimen which required little care and rewarded its owner by producing a beautiful red flower once every five years.

  ‘So, you specialise in population geography.’

  ‘That is a matter of public record.’

  ‘Analysis of your published work, blog posts and forum contributions, suggests a strong belief that the human population imperils the planet.’

  ‘I am far from alone in thinking that.’

  ‘True, but few who come to this conclusion plan to act on it.’

  Cooper disagreed. She knew many women, herself included, who had decided not to further pollute the planet by having children.

  Vogt smiled. He could afford to since the main purpose of this meeting had been to ensure Cooper’s apartment was empty when it was searched.

  ‘But Frau Cooper, we are not talking here about what like-minded people choose not to do, rather about the direct action a few of your number are presently planning to take.’ He turned to Professor Hofmann. ‘I wonder if you might give us the room for a few minutes.’

  The professor could hardly believe his ears. His office was a port in a storm, his retreat from his wife and the cares of the world, his inner sanctum. But Vogt had his reasons.

  ‘This is a sensitive issue involving national security.’

  ‘In that case…’

  The professor left, reluctantly, closing his own door behind him, wondering where best to go which would afford him an equivalent degree of peace.

  ‘So, Catherine, let’s be open with each other. Even as we speak, your fellow conspirators are in custody.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Okay, if that’s the way you wish to play it. I refer to your bosom buddies Cindy Horváth, Magnus Hjemdahl and Gudrun Grönefeld. Not to mention Herr Wanless who, as I’m sure you know, has been languishing in a Swiss jail for some time.’

  ‘I imagine Swiss jails are more comfortable than most.’

  Despite an unhelpful ethical streak, Vogt could lie with the best of them. If Cooper believed her accomplices were spilling the beans behind bars, she’d have nothing to lose by opening up. But Cindy Horváth, far from telling all in a Hungarian prison cell, was gracing the apartment of József Báthory, where she afforded him such comfort he had no intention of depriving himself of it by placing her in custody. She would have preferred to remain in her own apartment, but the ongoing investigation gave Báthory too much leverage. She knew this time would pass, but meanwhile there she was, a cage-bird with little choice but continuing to trill in her gilded YouTube channel.

  ‘Oh, and did I mention Gina Saito?’ he added, playing his trump card. ‘We have her too.’

  Homeland Security had no idea where Saito was. She’d managed the near impossible by disappearing from the grid. She would reappear, of course, but how much damage would she do before she did?

  Lang believed that however motivated Cooper might be, her resolve could not compare with Saito’s. She was the key. If Cooper thought she was in custody, such confidence as she had would crumble. Proceed on that basis, she’d told Vogt, and he had. But there she was, perched on her chair, tight-lipped, tense and silent. Perhaps with good reason. If the security services didn’t know where Saito was, Cooper might not know either. He tried another tack.

  ‘You should know that we are fully aware of your dealings with Gudrun Grönefeld and your subsequent transmission of a stolen virus to Los Angeles, an action which has already caused an outbreak of avian flu among airport staff.’

  ‘A minor one, I believe.’

  ‘Not for three people on the critical list.’

  Vogt stopped talking. He was waiting for something, which proved to be a phone call.

 
; ‘I see. Very helpful. Thank you.’

  ‘An interesting fellow, your father. He has just attacked one of our officers with a brick. It seems he took exception to the fact they were searching his apartment.’

  Choleric though he was, this had to be a first even for him.

  ‘Why would they bother with him? That man knows nothing about anything.’ She could hardly believe it. ‘A brick!’

  ‘One of two he was using as bookends. Nothing of relevance was found, but for obvious reasons he is now in custody too.’

  Three years had passed since Cooper had last seen her father’s apartment, but she clearly remembered the bricks he’d liberated from a building site to support his magazines and books. They’d just have gone to waste, he’d said at the time.

  ‘So, Frau Cooper, what will happen now? You will accompany me to Chausseestraße, where my immediate superior, Ursula Lang, will talk with you. Probably at length.’

  ‘This Frau Lang, is she aggressive?’

  ‘Quite the opposite.’

  55

  When they met later that day, Catherine Cooper knew at once who the woman was; she’d seen her in the Café Air innocently plying her needles. There was only one way to play it: stay calm and answer as many questions as possible without implicating her friends. Despite the tension of the situation, this was the strategy she could best maintain since it most accorded with her nature. Nonetheless, she found Ursula Lang, a middle-aged woman in well-worn clothes, disconcertingly at odds with her preconception of what a security person might be like.

  Shown into an interview room by Vogt, Cooper found her sitting at a table leafing through yesterday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. Lang rose to greet her.

  ‘Good day, Frau Cooper.’ Then she added, completely out of the blue, ‘I can’t get used to this place. No ambience whatsoever, absolutely none!’