by Colin Forbes
`There can't be any connection between all these horrible murders. The one in Norfolk must be a coincidence…'
`How far can you stretch coincidence? All four of them – Lindemann, Grey, Masterson and Dalby – were at the meeting I held in Frankfurt six months ago. Later, when they had presumably gone to bed, a Dutch girl was hacked to pieces and raped. Two years ago, on the night of July 14, the same four were having dinner at Hugh Grey's farmhouse out near the Wash. I gather the party went on late…'
`How late?'
`I don't know. There was a limit to the questions I could put to Paula, but we'll have to find out. That same night – or in the early hours of the morning – this poor girl, Carole Langley, was cut to pieces and raped. Now the same thing has happened twice at Travemunde. And I'm in an impossible position – after my visit to Dr Generoso.'
'Why?'
`Do I have to spell it out in words of one syllable?' Tweed snapped. `To expose the odd man out I need to exert unrelenting pressure on all four, hoping I can make the rotten apple crack. But Generoso warned me that more pressure can cause a schizo to increase his activities – to commit more murders.'
`You sound irritable,' Monica commented. 'Have you had your breakfast?'
`Just coffee from the thermos you gave me – supplied by the hotel. They gave me sandwiches but I can't drive and eat…'
Monica reached for the phone, gave the doorman a brief order, replaced the receiver. 'They're getting fresh sandwiches from that place round the corner. You eat before you preside over that meeting…'
`There isn't time…'
`I'm postponing it until 9.15. You eat first.'
`That might be a good idea,' Tweed mused more calmly. 'If they have to wait twiddling their thumbs it will make them wonder what is happening.'
`Can I sum up?' Monica suggested. 'Stick to the facts – as you're always telling me. The facts are Ian Fergusson travelled to Hamburg to meet Ziggy Palewska. Only the four sector chiefs knew of his journey, his destination. So one of them must have informed the other side. That is a fact. All the rest is speculation. How could any of the sector chiefs reach Travemunde in time to commit those two murders? Why in heaven would they go there to do their grisly work – knowing you were in the area?'
`There could be a reason, which I don't want to reveal yet – in case I'm wrong. My theory is so bizarre. But coming back on the plane from Hamburg I studied a road map I bought at the airport. Any of them could have driven to Schleswig- Holstein. That means they'd have to be out of touch with their sector HQ.'
`Even Harry Masterson? All the way from Vienna?'
`Yes. The autobahns. There's one from Salzburg through Munich. And Harry drives like Jackie Cooper.'
`Why this concentration on driving? There are airlines…'
`People can be seen at airports. An unlucky chance meeting with someone who knows you. No, it would be by road…'
He waited as George brought in a wrapped packet of sandwiches and a pot of coffee on a tray. Monica produced plates, shoved ham sandwiches in front of him, a paper napkin, then poured the coffee. She wouldn't allow him to talk until he had eaten.
`That does feel a lot better,' he admitted.
`You're hopeless on an empty stomach. Now, just before you start the meeting, what are we going to do?'
`First, you check with all four European HQs – Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Bern and Vienna. Find out where each sector chief was during the past two weeks. After the meeting,' he went on briskly, 'I'm giving the four of them a week's leave.'
`Not for their health, I'm sure…'
`I want to visit them at their homes, see their surroundings. I've just done that with Hugh Grey's place – although I also need to see him at his flat in Cheyne Walk. The only way I can get a clue as to who it is hangs on the psychological approach.'
`Which means?'
`Using the data I learnt from Generoso, I need to find out what my four chosen disciples are really like. I've never actually seen them on their home ground. That was a mistake. We vet them, build up files – but I need to get to know them as human beings, get them talking. One of them just may let something slip.'
`Time for your meeting. Feel more up to it?'
`This is going to be a grim meeting – for me. The point is I must in no way give even a hint of my suspicions.' Tweed stood up, straightened his polka dot tie. 'Oh, yes, I can handle them. That happens to be my job.'
His tone was brisk, his manner almost jaunty. Monica smiled – the four men waiting in the conference room were going to be put through the wringer. Tweed rampant.
`Gentlemen,' Tweed opened from his chair at the head of the table, 'I am not satisfied with your performance. Your reports from the field are skimpy – give no idea of the atmosphere out there…'
`My report did,' Grey interjected, full of confidence, his moonlike face flushed pink. 'All quiet on the western front…'
`Please don't interrupt. Your turn will come.' Tweed stared at Grey for a moment and then continued, his manner businesslike. 'I have told you all before, atmosphere – what the Germans call fingertip feeling – is the key to what the Russians are up to. I expect you all to remedy your slackness at this meeting. You first, Guy.'
Dalby, head of the Mediterranean sector, the catlick of brown hair looped over his forehead – was it his trademark? Tweed wondered – opened a file. He spoke rapidly, his dark eyes darting round the table.
`My people are puzzled. All normal contacts – informants – have dried up. Some have vanished from their usual haunts. I have issued instructions for an all-out drive to find out where the opposition agents are. They, too, have vanished. Atmosphere? I have the impression we are looking at a smokescreen. I want to break through the fog, find out what is being prepared behind it. That is my report.'
`Forget the facts for a moment,' Tweed said. 'What do you sense is going on?'
`Preparations for some major operation. We must watch out, be on the alert.'
`Any ideas now – you said at the last meeting you'd try to work it out – why Fergusson was murdered.'
`A trap. To get you to fly to Hamburg. They will try to kill you.'
There was a shocked hush round the table. Dalby never minced his words, never went all round the mulberry bush like Hugh Grey. Tweed glanced down the left-hand side of the table at Lindemann, who sat beyond Hugli Grey. He had his array of four different-coloured pencils, was scribbling away, so presumably Dalby was blue. A curious habit.
`Erich,' Tweed called out, 'your impressions, please.'
`Hard facts are what we need. I have some. Balkan has arrived in the West. Has probably set up his HQ in Grey's sector. Came in via Oslo. The action is starting in the North.'
Harry Masterson, who faced him, leaned forward, his manner bluff, full of confidence. 'And who the bloody hell is Balkan?'
`Code-name for their controller in the West,' Lindemann replied.
`You seem to know a lot – from your off-side sector…'
`Scandinavia is not off-side.' Lindemann spoke without rancour, with precision. 'It is the zone where NATO expects the first Soviet assault if they ever attack. That is why we have the big NATO nerve centre in the mountains just north of Oslo. My informants are most reliable. Balkan is very dangerous. He must be located, identified.'
`Bloody marvellous, isn't it?' Masterson rumbled in his public school accent. 'He waits till this meeting to tell us about what he calls their most dangerous agent. Christ! Are we working as a team, or are we not?'
Tweed kept quiet, watching the two men, who had never liked each other. He was trying to imagine any of the four grouped round the table wearing a beret. Lindemann was more than a match for Masterson's onslaught.
`The data about Balkan was too classified to transmit over the phone. Tweed has this information.'
`You have?' Masterson turned his aggressive personality on to his chief. 'Isn't that something we should all have been told as soon as you knew?'
`Lindemann h
as explained. I share his mistrust of the normal communications system. You know now. Why do you think you were brought back here so urgently?' Tweed ended tersely.
`I'd like to register a formal protest,' Grey broke in. 'And I want that registered in the minutes of this meeting. And who, I would like to know, is taking those minutes?'
`No one,' Tweed informed him.
`I would further like to register another protest. It is established procedure that minutes are taken of every meeting…'
`That procedure was just put on the shelf – for this particular meeting,' Tweed told him. 'No written reference to Balkan. Not without my express permission. Understood?'
`If you insist, I suppose so…'
`I beg your pardon?' Tweed's tone was icy.
`I withdraw that remark. Unreservedly.'
`Then perhaps you would like now to make your contribution?'
`All quiet on the western front,' Grey repeated. He was rather fond of the phrase. He beamed complacently. 'With important reservations,' he went on after a suitable pause. 'My contacts with the refugee organizations in Schleswig-Holstein lead me to expect action by the opposition imminent. The nature of that action is as yet unknown.' He glanced at Lindemann. 'Nor do I have any data on this so-called Balkan…'
`He is the top man – so difficult to detect,' Lindemann replied without looking up. He was using the red pencil to scribble notes. Red, Tweed presumed, must be Grey.
`Is this man among your refugee informants?' Tweed asked as he wrote a name on a sheet from his pad, folded it once and handed it to Grey. The name he had written was Ziggy Palewska.
Grey glanced at it, refolded the sheet and returned it to Tweed. 'I have never heard of the person.'
Which was astute, Tweed thought. Grey had concealed from everyone else even the gender of the informant. Tweed turned to Masterson who was twiddling a pencil between his large hands. Full of physical energy, not a committee man, Harry Masterson, unlike Grey, who revelled in long meetings.
`Harry, how goes it in the Balkans?'
`Damned frustrating. All known Soviet personnel and their hyenas have run for cover. I've sent certain men across the borders behind the penetration zones. Any day now someone will let something slip. The Curtain has dropped with a clang – but as I have just said, I have people on the other side. Something's brewing. Take my word for it. I can't wait to get back…'
`I'm afraid you'll have to,' Tweed said, seizing on the opening, 'because I'm giving all of you one week's leave. In this country. No quick trips to Monte Carlo.' He looked quickly at Masterson as he said this, then he stood up.
`Inform your deputies to take charge in your absence.'
`But we've only been in our new posts six months,' Grey protested. 'We need more time to work ourselves in. Then maybe you will get more comprehensive reports…'
`One week's leave. In this country,' Tweed repeated. 'And I shall want a word with each of you separately before you start that leave.'
Monica waited until the end of the day before she tackled Tweed. He had spent the afternoon having brief interviews with each of his sector chiefs, meetings from which Monica had been excluded. 'I want them relaxed,' he had explained. 'They may think you are recording our conversations.'
He called Newman at the Hotel Jensen at five o'clock. As he had hoped, the reporter was just back from a day with Diana at Travemunde. His call was brief. He asked Newman to go to the Hauptbahnhof, to call him back from one of the public phone booths at the station. Within ten minutes the phone on his desk rang.
`Newman here. Don't worry about Diana – I can see her from this box. I brought her with me. What's up?'
`Do you know whether Dr Berlin has returned again to his place on Priwall Island?'
`You're in luck. I met Kuhlmann who is still prowling round Travemunde, mostly interviewing people at the marina. He told me Dr Berlin is still missing. Kuhlmann has men watching that mansion night and day…'
`Thank you. That's very interesting. Call me should he come back. I don't think he will. Everything all right?'
`A weird trivia. Diana has decided to take a secretarial course. Typing and shorthand. Now, don't fuss, I take her to the school in Lubeck, leave her there. I know when she leaves and I'll be waiting for her.'
Did she say why?'
'A sudden whim. I was surprised myself…'
`Shorthand and typing? In German?'
'At the school, yes. She has dug out some old training manuals for Pitman's in English. She's teaching herself in English. She has bought a small portable. Keeps it hidden away inside a locker aboard the Sudwind. Apart from that, nothing new…'
'I should be with you in a week or so. Watch your back. Something is stirring in that part of the world.'
'Not much sign of it so far.'
'What about Kurt Franck?'
'Vanished into thin air…'
'Watch out for cripples,' Tweed said and put down the phone.
'Now!' Monica sat erect in her chair. 'Have you got five minutes? Good. What's going on? You've left Europe wide open – no sector chief on the continent. The deputies don't have the grip of the sector chiefs – and you know it.'
'Strategy,' said Tweed. 'Europe wide open, as you say. And I would bet money Lysenko will know it within hours. It will encourage him to make a move. I'm sitting back to see what move he will make. The field will seem clear – I'm tempting him into taking advantage of that fact. When he does move I'll know what he's up to. Meantime I'm going to visit Masterson at his cottage down at Apfield near Chichester, Lindemann at his flat in town, and Dalby – presumably coping on his own at Woking now he's separated from his wife who has gone off to France.'
'You seem to put great hopes on seeing them in their homes…'
'They'll be more relaxed. Someone is going to make a mistake, give me the lead I'm seeking. And why do you think someone like Diana Chadwick would suddenly take up a secretarial course?'
'Because she expects soon to have to earn her own living.'
Tweed looked thunderstruck. He stood up and paced his office, hands clasped behind his back. Then he stood looking down at Monica.
`What would I do without you?'
`Did I say something?'
`Oh, nothing momentous. You just gave me another sign that a truly bizarre theory I've hesitated to take seriously could be the whole key to Balkan.'
Nineteen
`Diana Chadwick will be aboard Flight BA 737, departing Hamburg 18.20, arriving Heathrow 18.50, London time. Please have her met.'
Newman's voice was crisp, almost brusque. Tweed gripped the receiver tightly and took a deep breath.
`Bob, you can't do that…'
`Diana has agreed. I'll see her aboard the flight at this end myself. Today. I can't be handicapped by having to guard her…'
`What the devil do you think you're up to?' Tweed demanded. `No arguments. I have a job I must do. On my own. I repeat – Diana will be aboard that flight…'
`I don't like it…'
`I didn't ask you to like it. You'll have her met?'
`I'll go myself – if I must…'
`You must.'
The connection was broken before Tweed could respond. He sat back in his chair and stared at Monica. She raised her eyebrows, cocked her head on one side like a bird.
`Newman has gone maverick again,' Tweed rasped. 'I have to go and collect Diana Chadwick off the Hamburg flight at 18.50 this evening. He's just put her aboard like a parcel…'
`Let's hope she doesn't have to travel cargo.'
`It almost sounded like that. He's freeing himself of the responsibility of guarding her so he can do his own thing. God knows what his game is – you know what he is when he's got the bit between his teeth.'
`Highly effective.'
`He takes too many risks for my liking.' Tweed stood up and walked over to the window, hands thrust inside his jacket pockets. 'On the other hand, with Diana being in England, she might just be the key I need to unlock the
mystery of Balkan's identity…'
Peter Toll, an officer in the BND, arrived in Lubeck from his Pullach HQ near Munich, the day before Newman made his phone call to Tweed.
Toll, an old friend of Newman's, walked into the Hotel Jensen, found that Newman was in his room, and sent up his card inside a sealed envelope. The reporter was chatting with Diana over a glass of wine when the porter brought up the envelope. He opened it, then looked at Diana.
`Would you excuse me for a few minutes? I want to get rid of this chap quickly. He's a nuisance.'
`Who is he?'
`An informant I've used in the past. He's become unreliable. You'll stay here till I get back? Don't open the door to anyone except me. I'll rap like this…'
He beat a tattoo on the table, left the room, waited outside the closed door until he heard her turn the key, then took the lift to the lobby. Peter Toll was tall and lean, clean-shaven, in his early thirties, a man who smiled easily and was one of the most quick-witted men Newman had met. He wore rimless spectacles and moved agilely. They shook hands.
`Care for a stroll along the river?' Toll suggested.
`Why not?' Newman waited until they were outside and walking beyond where the tables with people drinking stood on the pavement. 'How did you know I was here? Where to find me?'
Toll pushed his glasses further up his long nose, a gesture Newman remembered. 'It's my job to know when suspicious foreigners arrive in the Federal Republic,' he joked.
`Come off it, Peter, you want something. You haven't travelled all the way from Pullach just to pass the time of day.'
`What a cynical chap you are,' Toll continued in English. 'I could be here checking a situation and decided to call in on an old friend …'
`Get to the point, I don't want to be away from the hotel too long.'
`Of course not, Diana Chadwick is a fascinating woman so they tell me.'
`How did you know I was here?' Newman repeated. `Through Bonn…'
`Don't you mean Wiesbaden?'
`Kuhlmann would never inform me of your presence – not without pressure from the Chancellor. Kuhlmann is strictly concerned with the hideous killings of foreign girls. He's Criminal Police.'
