Prime Target

by Hugh Miller

  ‘The man on the list is definitely the same Andreas Wolff?’ Sabrina said.

  The address is the same,’ Philpott said, ‘and I see from C.W.’s information that the age is right, too. Wolff is fifty-eight. I repeat, I won’t make wild guesses about the significance of the list, but it’s worrying that Wolff’s name comes up in a mysterious context at a time like this.’

  ‘Like what?’ Sabrina said.

  ‘Well, as you know, the complexities of ICON have multiplied in the past year. What you don’t know is that as more law-enforcement agencies have committed their data to the network, Andreas Wolff has become indispensable. ICON’S continued existence depends on his expertise.’

  ‘You mean,’ Mike said, ‘that half the world’s police and national security organizations have been silly enough to put all their eggs in one basket? How come?’

  ‘It’s not an ideal state of affairs,’ Philpott said, ‘and nobody planned it that way. Wolff has become so closely linked to the system, and to determining its rate of development, that he’s pulled ahead of others in the field. No one else understands his programming routines or his security protocols.’

  ‘So if anything were to happen to Wolff,’ Whitlock said, ‘archive security could stagnate and the files would soon be vulnerable.’

  ‘That’s precisely what I’m saying. The potential gain from hacking into ICON is vast. It’s inestimable. And it pains me to tell you that the possibility of getting inside ICON is the driving force behind a lot of developments in electronic crime.’

  ‘Do hackers stand a serious chance?’ Lucy said.

  ‘Oh, yes, they have a chance and they’ve taken it. ICON’S security has already been breached.’

  Lucy looked startled. So did Sabrina.

  ‘Twice in three weeks,’ Philpott said. ‘Each time it was open for only a microsecond before alternative encryption routines cut in, but the warning is clear enough. The current generation of safeguards is being eroded, and we’re not over-stocked with alternatives.’

  ‘Who’s doing it?’ Lucy said.

  ‘Lord knows who. I shouldn’t think it’s any one group. It suits criminal organizations anywhere in the world to have a hole knocked in law enforcement. Hackers try all the time, and they’re fed big financial inducements to keep trying.’

  ‘So what’s being done?’ Mike said.

  ‘For the moment, Andreas Wolff provides emergency ICON security by changing the custodian routines at twelve-hour intervals. He will do this until his new generation of self-enhancing safeguards are test-run and installed.’

  ‘So if Wolff leaves the picture for any reason,’ Sabrina said, ‘the whole of ICON security collapses?’

  ‘It could be that extreme,’ Philpott said. ‘We could shut down ICON temporarily in an emergency, but the disruption would be catastrophic. It would be nearly as bad as having the system broken into. The new security arrangements will change everything. ICON will in effect become auto-secure. But until then we remain at serious risk. Without Wolff’s support, records and operational strategies could be uncloaked long enough to bring this organization’s security to its knees.’

  Philpott stopped abruptly and looked at his watch.

  ‘Right.’ He stood. ‘That’s it. I have to go. Compare notes. Make sure you all know the same amount about the case. The facts as they stand present us with a paradox, but in theory the way forward is simple. Find out what links the names on that list and you will have a line on why Emily Selby was killed. When you know that, you’ll know what you’re up against. Lucy, thanks for your input.’

  Halfway to the door he stopped. ‘I may change my mind later, but in the meantime I think Sabrina should dig up the whole story on Emily Selby, with special reference to her association with Erika Stramm.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we maybe get somebody to interview Stramm right away?’ Whitlock said.

  ‘No. I want us to know something about the relationship before she feeds us her version. Mike, I want you to get to work on that key Sabrina found. C.W., keep trying for a linking factor between the names on the list.’

  Philpott strode to the door and pulled it open.

  ‘In order to proceed we need a picture, something with shape and features we can identify. Do your best for me on this one.’

  Mike and C.W. muttered assurances. Sabrina nodded.

  ‘I deserve it, after all,’ Philpott said, and left.

  6

  ‘Now, tell me honestly, what did you think? Were you bored? Or did you enjoy the visit as much as you told the guide you did?’

  Karl Sonnemann, one week off his sixty-fourth birthday, stood smiling like a boy on the street outside Goethe’s birthplace in Frankfurt. His hands rested on the shoulders of Charlotte Gustl, a slender, shapely Münster girl with hair the colour of butter. Charlotte was twenty-two, one of Karl’s literature students at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University. As of last night she was technically his mistress, too.

  ‘I truly, truly loved the place,’ Charlotte said. ‘I’m sure I shall dream about it.’

  ‘I did feel that a visit to the birthplace might touch a chord in you,’ Karl said.

  ‘Seeing that little room where he slept. Where he had his dreams, oh…’ Charlotte clasped her hands under her chin. ‘I could feel, or I imagined I could feel, the surge of the forces that empowered him. This has given me a new perspective on Goethe, Professor.’

  ‘Karl,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘I told you, call me Karl.’

  ‘Very well.’ She coloured a little as he slid his arm through hers. ‘I seem to have moved forward years in the space of twenty-four hours.’

  ‘As they walked towards the taxi rank he squeezed her arm, thinking how alike they all were, the girls he picked to be his special blossoms for a term or two. How much alike in the way they looked, in what they said, in how they gave their bodies to him, season after season…

  How much alike, yet he never tired of them, and he found each one breathtakingly new. When he turned fifty a friend had winked at him and asked him how long now, how long before he would have to defer to his years and abandon his little hobby. At the time, Karl had said he would never cease, not until he died, and he said it wishing it were true. Now he felt it might indeed be true; he would simply never stop. The girls showed no more resistance as time passed, he still managed to charm them and, just as important, he could identify the ones he had charmed the most, and so take advantage.

  ‘I thought we would have a leisurely lunch at Alexander’s,’ he said, ‘and then go back to the university, where my only tutorial of the day is with a Fräulein Charlotte Gustl, if I’m not mistaken.’

  She chuckled. It was a moist throaty sound, a variation of the sounds she made against his ear in the night, under crisp sheets at the Excelsior Hotel. For a moment Karl found himself overcome by the swiftness of one sound conjuring up another, and by the sharp, tactile memory of her warmth and closeness…

  ‘There’s that young man again,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one I said was watching you at the birthplace.’

  Karl turned. The young man was looking in a shop window a few metres away. Karl had noticed him as they went into Goethe’s house, standing by the edge of the pavement, looking aimless, or trying to. For a terrible moment Karl considered the possibility that the young man, for all his fair-haired, clear-eyed wholesomeness, was a detective. What if Ursula, after so many years, had begun to suspect, and had set this snooper to find out for sure?

  Karl turned away, smiling at the wildness of his imagination. ‘I think he has taken your fancy, that young man. You seem to be tracing his movements.’

  ‘Oh! That’s not true!’ Charlotte looked genuinely offended. ‘How could you think such a thing?’

  She stopped talking abruptly and started over Karl’s shoulder. He turned and saw the young man had stepped over beside them. His face was very serious and purposeful. He glanced beyond them to the taxi r
ank, then looked directly at Karl.

  ‘You are Professor Sonnemann, is that correct?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Karl said stiffly.

  ‘Well, I was sure, actually,’ the young man said, blinking rapidly, gesturing with one hand, the other buried in his jacket pocket. ‘But mistakes cannot be rectified afterwards, as they say in the supermarkets.’

  ‘What do you want with us?’

  ‘You are Professor Sonnemann? Professor Karl Sonnemann?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Karl snapped. ‘So what of it?’

  ‘I have a message,’ the young man said.

  His face became very grave. He took his hand from his pocket. He was holding a long, straight butcher’s trussing needle.

  ‘This is for Yitzhak Brenner.’

  He thrust the needle deep into the side of Karl’s neck. Charlotte screamed. Karl felt nothing. He was only aware that suddenly his control of himself was gone. Charlotte pulled her arm free of Karl’s and ran to the taxi rank.

  The young man did not follow. He stood staring into Karl’s shocked face. The eyes were already glassy. His whole frame trembled as arterial blood left his body in a surge, draining him of life. He let out a rasping breath, his mouth foaming as blood surged from his neck down over his fine woollen overcoat.

  Charlotte was at the rank, howling and pleading. Karl sank to his knees, coughing blood. His face looked waxen and artificial.

  Two taxi drivers were coming, both of them running. The young man wiped his fingers on the shoulder of Karl’s coat. He turned, pressed his elbows to his sides and started to run. He ducked round a corner and disappeared into a throng of pedestrians.

  One taxi driver tried to follow him. The other knelt by Karl. He was on his back on the pavement, completely still, the big needle jutting from his throat.

  7

  The following morning Sabrina Carver took an early flight to Washington DC. It was her intention to interview, as casually as possible, the known friends and associates of Emily Selby, with a view to gaining the kind of insight the records didn’t show. Ahead of her visit UNACO administration made an appointment for her at the White House, where she hoped to talk to Emily’s former colleagues under the guise of a police investigator. Her laminated ID card, exquisitely printed in muted, solemn colours, identified her as an officer of the United States National Central Bureau of the International Criminal Police Commission. It was the stiff-necked official way of declaring she was an agent of Interpol. At White House Reception she was met by a brisk young woman who showed her to a visitors’ waiting room. There, after a few minutes, she was joined by the Information Officer’s number-two assistant, Kevin Riley. He was a firm man, entrenched in his procedures.

  ‘White House security regulations demand that you stay in this room at all times during your visit,’ he told Sabrina. ‘If you leave the room for any reason whatsoever, you must be accompanied by a member of White House Security. Of course, we will do all we can to accommodate you within the rules governing your visit here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Since your people emphasized you’re not here on official investigative business, we’ve let people make up their own minds whether they want to be interviewed or not. Three colleagues of Mrs Selby have shown a willingness to talk to you. The first should be along shortly. Naturally, we want to do all we can to clear Emily’s name of any shadow.’

  The first to arrive was Janice Cleary, a short, overweight woman in her forties. Janice wore the kind of perfume that surrounded her with a cloying miasma. She wheezed as she sat down and took a moment to rearrange her voluminous clothing. When she spoke, her voice had a high, childish register.

  ‘I was probably Emily’s closest friend, professionally,’ she told Sabrina. ‘Four years ago we worked on the Herzog project together. I think our friendship cemented around that time.’

  ‘What was the Herzog project?’

  ‘It was named after the President of Israel at that time, Chaim Herzog. He was looking for a solid basis for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement, and the feeling here was that he could use a shade more support from the USA, which wasn’t officially all that cosy with Israel at the time. Emily and me, we did what we could to high-profile non-political areas of common ground between the two nations.’

  ‘How did you do that, exactly?’

  ‘We used press and radio outlets to boost awareness of cultural exchange programmes, we got an information booklet together showing how alike many of the American and Israeli down-home aspirations were. The aim, overall, was to pass on the message, to both nations, that, political differences aside, we were really natural friends. Emily really put her heart into that programme and, as I said, we became real close.’

  ‘Tell me about Emily as a person,’ Sabrina said. ‘Did she socialize much? Go to parties, the theatre, concerts?’

  ‘Not after Desmond died,’ Janice said. ‘Not too much before that either, I don’t think…’

  ‘She took it badly, her husband dying?’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Was she a long time getting over it?’

  ‘She never got over it.’

  ‘She told you that.’

  ‘No need. I could tell. The change in her. She became withdrawn. Reclusive. She developed little daily rituals of work that involved only herself, which is easy to do in this line. It’s how you get to be a specialist, and Emily was our shiniest specialist of all. On the ball, always.’

  Sabrina was sure Janice had never been as close to Emily Selby as she thought; crass people often mistake politeness for friendliness. They talked for a few more minutes, long enough for Sabrina to be sure that whatever the extent of Emily’s social life, Janice Cleary knew nothing about it. Sabrina thanked her and apologized for taking her away from work.

  A minute after Janice left, a young man came in. He was tall, with a narrow mouth that looked incapable of smiling. He looked at Sabrina cautiously from pale sunken eyes. He was Joe Dexter. For five years, he said, he had been a research assistant working for three senior political analysts, and Emily Selby had been one of them.

  He talked for ten minutes about Emily, without once needing to be prompted. He described her working methods, her talent for organization, her patience with other people, her unending devotion to her job. He thought the world of her, he said.

  As he continued to talk, Sabrina realized he meant that literally: he thought the world of Emily Selby, and although it appeared Emily had regarded him as no more than a valued assistant, he had obviously been obsessed with her. But he had said nothing, he had never betrayed to Emily any sign of his emotional response to her. It would have been unprofessional to do that, he said.

  Just like me and Mike, Sabrina thought, startling herself. She had confronted a buried truth, not for the first time, but, as always, she was inclined to shy away. She bowed her head over her notepad and closed her eyes for a moment.

  Just like me and Mike.

  Nothing had ever been declared, or demonstrated. Usually, it was the opposite of affection that prevailed. They were rivals on the same team, antagonists in a single cause. At times there was a strength of antipathy that felt like hatred, at least on her side. Yet she knew she kept the lid on a richness of feeling that would have engulfed him, smothered him. And she suspected, without having examined the suspicion, that he kept something suppressed, too.

  Joe Dexter fell silent, and Sabrina thanked him for his time. He left without another word.

  She gazed at her notebook. Again, she had been told nothing that threw any real light on Emily Selby. She accepted that she might be going back to New York empty-handed. It would be best to get used to the idea now and work on her defence against Philpott’s displeasure.

  And then the telephone beside her rang. A woman introduced herself as Dilys Craig. She was a former colleague of Emily’s, she said, and she would love to talk to Sabrina about her, but right now she was tied up.

  ‘It’s an unexpected j
ob, something I can’t get out of,’ she said. ‘How about we meet outside later today? For coffee, say?’

  ‘That would be fine,’ Sabrina said, ‘if it’s no trouble. Where will I meet you?’

  ‘Harvey and Hannah’s,’ Dilys said. ‘Go down Pennsylvania Avenue till you come to the Willard Hotel complex, look for the Occidental Grill, and it’s right alongside. Four-thirty. Does that suit?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ Sabrina said.

  At 4.32 Dilys Craig walked into the coffee shop, looking stunning in a checked Escada jacket and grey pencil skirt. She came straight to the table where Sabrina sat. She was tall with large hazel eyes and skin smoothed to perfection by cosmetics. Her hair was cut short and had been tinted a shade somewhere between chestnut and auburn. She was not young, tiny crow’s-feet were visible at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but she had impressive poise and energy.

  ‘I got you coffee,’ Sabrina said, pointing to the cup opposite hers. ‘The woman seemed to know what you like.’

  ‘She’s a doll,’ Dilys said, sitting down, crossing elegant sheened legs. ‘Nice to meet you, Sabrina.’ She took a sip of coffee. ‘Shall we get right to it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you right off, I was as close to being friendly with Emily as you could get. But that wasn’t very close. She was good at keeping the world at a distance.’ Dilys took out a matt black cigarette case. ‘Mind if I smoke?’

  ‘I don’t mind, no, but I thought -’

  ‘It’s banned in here? Right. That makes me enjoy it all the more. I can smoke so long as there are no other customers.’ She lit up, and sighed. ‘This all seems so unreal, I still can’t quite believe that she’s gone. But I obviously want to help your investigation in any way I can.’

  ‘I’m trying to get background on Emily’s off-duty life,’ Sabrina said. ‘Did you ever meet her socially?’