[Jack Harvey Novels 01] Witch Hunt

by Ian Rankin

  All eyes were on him. A couple of hours ago he would have taken up the gauntlet. He would have revelled in pointing out all the mistakes. But they were basic mistakes - such as choice of location, for example -

  and couldn't be changed at this late stage. So he shrugged. The gauntlet remained on the ground.

  'I've been over the security arrangements with some of Commander Trilling's men. We haven't made any recommendations.'

  'Yes,' said Barker, 'but that's rather an ambiguous answer, Mr Elder, isn't it? You may not have made any recommendations, but did you see any flaws?'

  Elder swallowed. 'No, sir,' he said.

  Barker seemed satisfied. 'Thank you, Mr Elder. Mrs Parry sees flaws.'

  Elder's heart sank. He'd walked straight into a trap. The underling was handing the Home Secretary a sheet of paper.

  'She thinks,' Barker went on acidly, 'in retrospect that London was a poor choice of location for the summit. She feels security is difficult to maintain in a city of ten million inhabitants.' He placed the sheet of paper on the table. Elder saw that it was a letter of sorts, a memo.

  He'd guess, by Barker's pique, that it had been sent to the Prime Minister direct, bypassing Barker himself.

  'I have to agree with Mrs Parry,' Trilling said quietly, 'that London is far from ideal from a purely security point of view.'

  'Well, it's a bit bloody late to tell us now, isn't it?' said the Home Secretary coldly. 'It looks to me, from where I'm sitting, as though MI5 and Special Branch are attempting to cover their arses in the event that an assassination attempt does take place, and maybe even, God forbid, succeeds. That smacks to me of panic and impotence. Panic and impotence, Commander.' His eyes found Elder's. 'Panic and impotence, Mr Elder.'

  'I'm sure Mrs Parry is only pointing out—'

  'Why isn't she here today?' The Home Secretary's voice had risen enough for his underling to glance up. 'I'll tell you why, Mr Elder, because she didn't have the guts to face me on this. So she sent you instead.

  And who are you, Mr Elder?' The finger pointing at him was long and thick with a gleaming, manicured nail. 'You're in retirement. You're in London on a consultancy basis. What the hell is going on in Joyce Parry's department,

  that's what I'd like to know? And believe me, I intend asking her.'

  'What Mrs Parry means,' said Elder, 'is that you can't cordon off central London. The IRA learned that a long time ago. You can't be secure in London.'

  'This assassin, though, she's not IRA, is she?'

  'She doesn't belong to a group.'

  'People hire her?'

  'Sometimes, not always. Look, people like Witch don't want peace.

  They're not the types to sit in hotel rooms and around conference tables.

  Look at Hamas in Palestine - the PLO were getting too much like the establishment. Witch is a one-woman splinter group.'

  'Then what is her ideal?'

  Elder smiled. 'People keep asking me that. Why does she have to have one?' He paused, aware that Trilling's foot was touching his beneath the table. It was a warning. It was telling him not to explode.

  Barker sat for a few moments in silence, his face implacable. His voice when he spoke again was cool, not quite objective.

  'We're going to go through the security arrangements again. Step by step. Don't bother looking at your watches because we'll be in this room as long as it takes.' He slipped out of his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. He began to roll up his shirtsleeves.

  'Sandwiches will be brought in, as will tea and soft drinks. There's water available whenever required. You may know that the Foreign Secretary has urgent business in the Middle East, so I'm going to be attending more of his bloody summit than was the intention. This being the case, I don't want any fuck-ups.' He paused, glancing from man to man to man. 'So, gentlemen . . . perhaps we'd better begin?'

  Elder looked down at the table. He knew that several pairs of accusing eyes were on him. The Army, the SAS, Intelligence.

  Stuck in here because of his department, because of a letter sent by his boss. Elder knew why Joyce had written the letter. She'd written it because, having checked security at the Conference Centre and beyond, having read Greenleaf 's impressive report on the security arrangements, Elder had warned her to. He just hadn't expected she would take his advice.

  'Let's cover ourselves,' had been his exact words. 'Let's cover ourselves from criticism.'

  Yet now he felt naked as the day he'd been born.

  Herr Grunner of the Burgwede Maximum Security Prison was far too polite a man to tell the two young people in front of him that their request for an interview with Wolfgang Bandorff had upset his whole weekend.

  His wife and he had been due to visit their son in Geneva. The son was a physicist and worked at the huge CERN project beneath the Swiss-French border. Herr Grunner knew that the letters CERN stood for Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire. He also knew that 'nucle-aire'

  in this case had nothing to do with nuclear bombs or anything military.

  The people on the project were scientists, and they were trying to probe the secrets of particle physics - hence 'nucleaire', the nucleus.

  The proud parents had been taken before on a tour of the CERN complex, their heads dizzied by the size and complexity of the underground machines. But, though Herr Grunner had listened closely to Fritz's explanations, he hadn't really understood much of anything. So this trip was to be pleasure only: a trip to the mountains, a few meals, a chance to meet Fritz's Swiss ladyfriend Cristel.

  And now he'd had to make telephone calls, to explain matters to his wife. The trip was put back until the

  following weekend. Herr Grunner's wife was not at all amused. Which was perhaps why he had brooded on the visit to his prison by a member of the French internal security agency, accompanied by a member of British internal security. It was curious after all, wasn't it? Curious that those two countries' very adequate external intelligence agencies shouldn't be involved. Curious enough certainly to merit a call to his country's own internal security agency, the BfV.

  Still, when Mademoiselle Herault and Mr Barclay arrived, Herr Grunner was polite, obliging, deferential. They had to take tea in his office while he told them something of the prison's history. Not that he wanted to keep them from their appointment, you understand; this was a matter of courtesy alone, and the young couple seemed to acknowledge this.

  All the same, Mr Barclay had questions for Herr Grunner.

  'Has Bandorff had any visitors lately?'

  'Visitors are kept to a minimum.'

  'Lately though?'

  Herr Grunner looked as though he might become difficult, then relented.

  He pressed two digits on his telephone and repeated Barclay's question in German, then waited. After a moment he began to scribble on a notepad, then gave a grunt of acknowledgement and put down the receiver.

  'His mother and his sister.'

  'On the same day?'

  'No, on different days.'

  'When did the sister visit?'

  'March the twentieth,' Herr Grunner looked up from the notepad, 'at ten o'clock.'

  'I take it you check the identities of visitors?'

  'Of course.' Herr Grunner looked at his watch. 'Now, if we are ready . .. ?'

  They were ready.

  Bandorff's cell was large, more like a hospital room than part of a prison. Bandorff was allowed, as Herr Grunner had explained, a lot of his own things: books, tapes, a cassette-player, his own clothes even.

  There was a typewriter and plenty of writing paper, and even a portable colour TV. The walls had been painted sunflower gold, and then decorated with maps and posters, including a smiling photograph of the Pope.

  Two warders entered the cell first, and would remain there throughout.

  Wolf Bandorff was watching television. He lay on his bed, hands behind his head, legs stretched out, feet crossed at the ankles. He seemed to be watching a quiz show. Herr Grunner bowed
towards Bandorff - who nodded his head slightly in response -then left for his office. Two chairs had been placed on the same side of a small desk, both the chairs facing Bandorff. It did not look as though the terrorist was about to shift either his body or his gaze.

  But as Dominique sat down, she saw Bandorff's eyes move to just below the level of the desk. He was staring at her legs. Instinctively, she tugged her skirt down a little further. He looked up at her, light glinting from his round wire-framed spectacles, saw that her wriggling was his doing, and grinned. He was in his early fifties, his hair long and silvered and swept back. Had it been thicker, it might have been described as a 'mane', but it was thin and unwashed. He was thinner than the photos - those old photos in the Witch file - had intimated.

  He no doubt kept in shape in the prison gymnasium. He was a good-looking man who had not gone to seed.

  'You're beautiful,' he told Dominique in German.

  'Thank you,' she said crisply in English.

  'You're French?' he asked her in French.

  'Yes,' she said, still in English.

  'But you want to conduct this interview in English,' he said, nodding.

  He turned his attention to Barclay. 'Therefore I take it you, my friend, are either American or British?'

  'I'm English,' said Barclay.

  'And I,' said Bandorff, 'am German.' He began watching the quiz show again. 'And this,' he said, waving a hand towards the TV, 'is as good a theory of terrorism as I've ever seen.' His hand curled into a fist, index finger extended like a pistol barrel. The hand bucked, an imaginary bullet finding the all-too-real target.

  'You miss guns, Herr Bandorff?'

  Bandorff didn't reply. Barclay looked at Dominique. He was trying hard to phrase another question, but his mind was not cooperating; all it could think of was the bombshell Dominique had dropped as they were leaving Herr Grunner's office.

  'Michael,' she'd said to him in an undertone, 'you know there was something I wanted to tell you last night? Well, it's this. None of this is sanctioned by my superiors.'

  He'd almost passed out. 'What?'

  'I'm not authorised to be here. I telephoned a colleague and got him to give me the prison details and phone number. I didn't tell my superiors I was coming.'

  His walk had slowed. If he moved any faster, he felt his legs would buckle under him. 'Why not?'

  'They wouldn't have let me. This is a big job. And I'm not that big.

  Remember, I told you back in Calais: you weren't important enough to merit someone more senior. My superiors don't know anything about anything .. . not yet. They think I've been following you these past days while you made your investigations. I haven't told them anything more.'

  'Jesus Christ!'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Why tell me now?'

  She shrugged. 'Maybe because now you can't back down and leave me all by myself

  'You seem engrossed.'

  Barclay snapped out of it, Bandorff was talking to him. He became aware that he'd been staring at the TV screen. He took a deep breath. 'My name is Michael Barclay, Herr Bandorff. This is Mademoiselle Herault.

  We'd like to ask you a few questions.'

  'Do I win any prizes?'

  Barclay just smiled. He took a photograph from his pocket, got up and walked over to Bandorff. The warders looked bored. Barclay stopped a foot or so from Bandorff 's bed and held the photograph towards him.

  'She's beautiful too, Herr Bandorff.'

  Bandorff peered short-sightedly at the photo. 'I can't . .. my eyes aren't what they were.'

  One of the warders said something in German.

  'He says Herr Bandorff can see fine,' translated Dominique.

  Barclay held his ground. The hand holding the photo was remarkably steady.

  Well, after all, what had he to lose? He was here because Dominique had played a trick on him. They'd run fast and loose, ignoring all the laws of the game. Rugby had been invented that way, but careers had come to a speedy end that way too. What had he got to lose?

  'The photo was taken some time ago. It shows you and a young woman.

  For want of her real name, we in the security service call her Witch.'

  'Witch?'

  'Die Hexe,' translated Dominique. Bandorff glanced towards her.

  'Thank you,' he said crisply, 'I do know what the word means.' He paused, watching for her reaction, then chuckled. 'Witch. I like the name.'

  'The photo,' Barclay went on, 'shows you with a young woman, Herr Bandorff. You're in a crowd in the city of Edinburgh. You're watching the Pope.'

  'Are we?'

  'We're interested in the woman.'

  'Why?' Bandorff was still staring at the photo.

  'She's become a very proficient terrorist over the years. I believe she gained her earliest training at your hands?'

  'Oh no, not her earliest training.'

  A breakthrough! He'd acknowledged he knew her. Barclay had to press on. 'Do you know much about her early life?'

  'Nothing at all, my friend. She came, she stayed, she left. I knew less about her when she left than I did when she arrived. While she, on the other hand, knew quite a lot about me.' He took a deep breath, sighed.

  Barclay could smell pork sausage, garlic, caries. 'Ah, the good old days. I'd like to know what happened to her. Can you tell me?'

  T thought maybe you could tell me. She visited you quite recently, didn't she?'

  'Did she?'

  'Posing as your sister. Witch is good at disguise, it wouldn't have been difficult. What did you talk about?'

  Wolf Bandorff stared into Barclay's eyes and laughed. 'So young and yet so wise.' Then he turned back to the TV. Barclay stood his ground.

  From this close, he could see the musculature beneath Bandorff's grey T-shirt, the veins and tendons in his arms.

  'She needed help, didn't she? You must have been surprised to see her after all this time.'

  Bandorff spoke quietly, his words evenly spaced. 'Do you know how long they intend keeping me here?' Barclay waited for him to answer his own question. 'Another sixteen years, my friend. Another sixteen years of books, music, magazines.' He nodded towards the TV. 'When I am released, I shall make my fortune by appearing on general knowledge quiz programmes, always supposing my memory holds up.' He paused, his eyes fixed on the photograph.

  'I must thank you for showing me this,' he said. 'It has reinforced one of my memories.' He looked past Barclay to Dominique. 'She is beautiful, isn't she?'

  Barclay didn't think he meant Dominique. 'She was,' he said.

  'She still is, believe me. You never forget those eyes.'

  'What did she want?'

  Bandorff shrugged and returned to the TV.

  'She needed help,' Barclay replied, 'and you gave it. You were able to introduce her to two people in Paris who could help her.'

  Bandorff looked back to Barclay and smiled. He smiled back. 'I'm fed up calling her Witch,' he said. 'What did you call her?'

  Now Bandorff was chuckling. Barclay went back to his chair and sat down.

  He caught Dominique's eye. She seemed to be urging him on.

  'Can you leave me that photograph?' Bandorff asked casually.

  'Maybe,' said Barclay. But he slipped the photo back into his pocket.

  'Shall I tell you something, my friend?' Barclay waited. 'I may be the only man alive who has ploughed his way through Balzac's Comedie humaine.

  Yes, all ninety-one

  volumes. Here's my advice: don't bother.' He smiled to himself, then lowered his head so that he could scratch his nose just beneath his glasses. 'I shouldn't think Herr Grunner is happy about your visit,'

  he said at last, straightening. 'He enjoys his Sundays at home.

  Sunday . . . strange choice of day to pay your respects.'

  'We're not going to get anything here,' Dominique said to Barclay, just loud enough for Bandorff to hear.

  'Tell me, Herr Witchfinder,' said Bandorff, 'what are you doing here rea
lly?'

  'Her most recent assassination was in the United Kingdom.'

  Bandorff nodded. 'The banker, Khan?' He smiled at the surprise on Dominique's face. 'The newspapers here printed the story. I am not clairvoyant, I only read words. Clairvoyants, though, read faces, don't you think? I knew of Khan. His bank was said to sponsor terrorist groups .. . but never mine. We had to find our backers elsewhere. That photograph . . . how do you know it is Witch?'

  Barclay shrugged. 'Personally I don't.'

  'Personally? Personally I? But someone else, eh? Someone who has seen her since, and then saw the photograph, and who made the connection.

  He would be the Witchfinder General, eh?'

  Barclay tried to think of Dominic Elder in such a role. It fitted all too easily.

  'One thing I learned about the woman you call Witch

  'Yes?'

  'She changes allegiances.'

  'That's hardly news, Herr Bandorff. She's been involved with several terrorist groups.'

  'Still, it was one of the things I learned about her. She might also appreciate being given a sort of codename . . .

  this “Witch” that you call her. She was fascinated by word games and crosswords.' He tilted his head to one side, remembering. 'She would lie in bed puzzling over them . . . Ah, then there was the third thing.'

  'Yes?'

  'Sex, Herr Barclay. She didn't like sex. No sex for Die Hexe.' A smile.

  'That must have disappointed you,' said Dominique coolly.

  'Oh yes,' said Bandorff reflectively. 'A grave disappointment. But it went further. I felt she didn't like men.'

  'She was a lesbian?' Dominique sounded disbelieving. Bandorff laughed.

  'No, no, all I mean is that she hated men. Now tell me, you're a woman, why might that be?'

  'I can think of a few reasons,' said Dominique.

  'Me, too,' said Bandorff. 'I wonder if they're the same? Perhaps psychoanalysis could explain it.'

  'And you've no idea where she came from?' asked Barclay.

  'Oh, well, she was passed along the line. One activist passed her to another . . . and so on. Each time a little more radical, a little more committed. But all those people are gone now. You won't trace her history that way. All I knew was that she wanted to change the world. That was good enough for me back then, and good enough for her. When she left, she left without warning. She'd brought no baggage, and she took none, except for her tarot pack and her teddy bear.' He was reminiscing. It sickened Barclay. 'She's become a myth, hasn't she? Who am I to tamper with myths?'