The old Stasi man sat hunched over the keyboard, his deeply lined, deceptively noble face sombre with concentration. For a split second Sam felt sorry for the man. He’d had a dream and it was about to end. Sam crept past and came round behind him. Over his shoulder he could see the Hotmail screen. Hoffmann was typing a message. Sam hovered, trying to see the words, but the text was too small.
Suddenly, sensing danger, Günther Hoffmann lifted his eyes above the screen and saw that the official behind the payment desk was looking intently in his direction. Not at him, he realised quickly, but at someone standing behind him. He swung the chair half round, completing the turn with his head.
Hoffmann took in a sharp breath. The steeliness was gone from the slate-grey eyes. Sam saw a look of defeat. Then the old man swung back to the monitor and grabbed the mouse to block off the text on the screen.
‘No way,’ Sam growled, springing forward to prevent him erasing what he’d written. He yanked at the chair, swinging it round again, jerking the mouse from Hoffmann’s hand.
‘How’s the heart, Herr Hoffmann? Or should I say Lucifer?’ Their faces were inches apart.
Suddenly the German butted forward. Sam felt his nose crack. His vision exploded in stars. He reached blindly for Hoffmann’s shoulders but the chair was already empty. He felt warm liquid trickle down his upper lip and pressed a sleeve against his nostrils. As his eyes cleared, he set off after Hoffmann, yelling at the official behind the counter not to touch the computer. The man grabbed a phone and began dialling.
Hoffmann was only seconds ahead of him. Back in the book collection room Sam saw the door to the staircase swing shut. There were gasps from the waiting readers at the blood spattering his front.
Once on the staircase, he heard Hoffmann’s wheezy breath above him and caught a glimpse of his back in the curve. The old spy was showing a surprising turn of speed for a man of his age.
‘Stop!’
In his confusion and anger the German words weren’t coming to him. Sam was furious with himself for letting the rogue get the better of him.
Up on the ground floor level, Hoffmann ran full pelt for the exit. He shouted something to the security guard in his hutch by the door and pointed back towards Sam.
‘Fuck . . .’
The blob of officialdom emerged from his cubby-hole, arms outstretched. Sam swerved to avoid the man but his bulk blocked the doorway.
Sam’s tongue seemed to swell in his mouth as he sought the words which would make the man understand. But before he could form them, huge arms folded round him like a clam shell, enveloping him in an odour of armpits and stale smoke.
‘Na, ja . . .’ the guard grunted, turning him round like a pot on a wheel and pinning his arms behind him. He gabbled on in a Viennese accent that Sam found incomprehensible.
‘Sie verstehen nicht,’ Sam croaked. ‘Er ist Mörder! Sie müssen ihn . . .’
‘Ja, ja ja . . .’ the guard clattered. Sam made out the word ‘Polizei’.
He was manhandled into the security office. The man’s strength was phenomenal. Other staff had gathered, alerted by the sound of the commotion. The blood and the fact that he was a foreigner fuelled their hostility.
He was slammed onto a chair and held there by the guard while a woman in glasses dialled a number. He heard the word ‘Polizei’ again.
Then suddenly they were there. Not in response to the call, but because Patrick de Vere Collins had promised to tip off Austrian security about Sam going after Hoffmann. Two uniformed officers came running in through the entrance doors, closely followed by the Inspektor who’d been in charge of the Kovalenko murder case.
‘Herr Packer . . . You seem to be in some difficulties.’
‘Inspektor Pfeiffer, that’s an epic understatement,’ Sam coughed as the library guard reluctantly released his grip. ‘Did you get Hoffmann?’
‘I do not know how he looks,’ the Inspektor answered, frowning. ‘Explain to me please.’
‘I will. Outside. Follow me quickly.’ He pushed through the doors into Heldenplatz, the police close behind him.
There was no sign of Hoffmann. Sam checked with his embassy driver.
‘See anybody come running from the library?’
The man shook his head. ‘Wasn’t looking,’ he mumbled. Illegally parked, his anxiety at the arrival of the police was tangible.
Sam clicked his tongue with annoyance. The nosebleed was stopping. He quickly filled Pfeiffer in.
‘The computer, it still have the Internet connection?’ the Austrian asked, grasping the situation immediately.
‘It did a few minutes ago.’
They ran back inside and down to the communications centre. The grey-suited official was hovering by the PC that Hoffmann had been using.
The Inspektor ordered him not to touch it. The official protested that the time paid for had run out. Sam pulled a 50-schilling note from his wallet and thrust it into the bureaucrat’s hand.
They sat at the screen. The message Hoffmann had been writing was still blocked off but hadn’t been erased. The words were in English to someone with the moniker ‘Gustaf Adolf’. Praise for a firebomb attack last night. Sam assumed it was Stockholm. Then a warning. The Lucifer Network cell in England had been closed down by ZOG activity. It was time to lie low for a while.
‘It is better we don’t touch this,’ the Inspektor breathed. ‘I will send for computer specialists to examine everything.’
‘We must find out where Hoffmann’s gone,’ Sam insisted. ‘The answer may be here.’
He clicked the mouse on the mail ‘folders’ and opened up ‘sent messages’. One e-mail there. In German this time. Sam and the Inspektor read it together.
It warned the recipients that the opposition was making progress against them and it begged them not to fail. It talked of the twelve months of preparation they’d already put in. And it described the next attack as the most important of their whole campaign.
You must succeed. None of us can know how long we have in this life and I want to die in peace knowing that my homeland will be safe.
The Inspektor pointed at the screen. ‘He use the word Heimat.’
‘Homeland. So the smallpox attack is to be in Germany,’ Sam deduced.
‘But Heimat can mean a place more particular. His own home. His own part of the country. You know where that is?’
‘He lived in Berlin for most of his life,’ Sam told him. ‘But . . .’ Suddenly he stood up. ‘I’ve just thought of something.’
He strode to the service counter and asked the official if he had international phone directories. The man handed him a CD and pointed to a PC next to the photocopiers. Sam loaded the disc into the machine and looked up the number of Sky News in London. He rang it from a booth and a couple of minutes later emerged grim-faced.
‘Greifswald,’ he announced. ‘That’s where the attack will be.’
Pfeiffer looked quizzical.
‘Sky News has been following an Albanian refugee family,’ Sam explained. ‘The broadcasts have been shown all over Europe. Yesterday morning they filmed them settling into a hostel in northern Germany, a place already full of Balkan refugees. And the town was Greifswald – that’s where Hoffmann was born, Herr Inspektor. No wonder this target’s so important to him.’
The policeman got to his feet. More of his men were arriving. He ordered them to seal off the communications area and to keep the Internet connection open until specialists arrived from his headquarters. Then he turned back to Sam. ‘I will quickly contact my colleagues in Germany,’ he told him. ‘And we will put out Hoffmann’s description.’
‘How would he get to Greifswald?’ Sam asked.
‘Why? You think Hoffmann goes there himself?’
‘In that e-mail he talks about dying. He told me once he wanted to end his days in Greifswald.’
The Inspektor stared at him.
‘Then I must warn the airport. He would first fly to Berlin.’
‘No
.’ Sam put out a hand to stop him. ‘He hates planes. Told me he never flies these days if he can help it.’
‘The train, then. Come. We will go to the Westbahnhof.’
Outside, Sam told his driver to return to the Embassy, then piled into one of the police cars with the Inspektor. With the blue light and siren going, they powered their way through the traffic, reaching the station in less than five minutes.
Sam and the policeman ran inside, checking the indicator board for trains to Nürnberg where, according to the phone conversation with rail enquiries which the Inspektor had had in the car, Hoffmann would pick up a connection to Berlin and Greifswald. There was one leaving in twenty minutes.
‘Number seven,’ the Inspektor grunted.
They hurried onto the platform. Several of the train doors were open and a few passengers were already boarding. Sam stepped into the first carriage with the Inspektor right behind him. He looked the length of it, checking faces, then passed swiftly through to the next.
It was in the fourth carriage he spotted him. Sitting alone at a table at the far end of an otherwise empty compartment. Günther Hoffmann began to rise when he saw Sam, but flopped back into the seat when the Inspektor thrust a hand under his jacket and pulled out a Glock pistol. Hoffmann’s grooved cheeks seemed to hang loosely from his skull. As they closed in, he placed his hands flat on the table.
‘Aufstehen!’ the Inspektor ordered, the gun sight levelled on the centre of Hoffmann’s forehead.
The old spy rose, head held high, back straight, his eyes looking past them as if at some distant goal that he still intended to reach. The Inspektor told him to put his hands on his head then frisked him. There was nothing in his inside pockets other than a wallet and a pen.
‘Where is it, Günther?’ Sam hissed. ‘Where’s the smallpox?’
Hoffmann glared contemptuously at him. ‘You know me for too long time, Herr Packer, to expect me to answer your questions.’
‘You’re an evil bastard,’ Sam blazed. ‘Lucifer. The name suits you.’
‘It does. But not in the way you mean. You misunderstand, Herr Packer. To the Romans, Lucifer was the morning star. The bringer of light to the world.’
Sam saw a touch of insanity in his eyes. ‘And you planned to emulate Lucifer by murdering people and creating a climate of fear . . .’
‘You cannot have morning light without first having the darkness of night,’ Hoffmann rejoined, sitting down again stiffly.
‘The Sikhs and the Jews in London. The Turks in Sweden. Albanians in Germany.’ Sam counted off the targets. ‘Vladimir Kovalenko . . .’
‘He had, as you say in English, passed his sell-by date,’ Hoffmann interrupted, allowing himself a little smirk.
‘After providing you with the wherewithal to let loose a plague.’
Hoffmann pressed his lips together.
‘There’ll be children dead in Greifswald,’ Sam stressed. ‘Like in Golders Green. Only this time it’ll be hundreds. Is that what you want?’
He saw a flicker in the eyes. A reminder that despite Hoffmann’s insane ambition his compassion might still be stirred by its consequences.
‘Little bodies aflame with blisters. Raging fever. No treatment possible that could stop their screams. You want that?’
Hoffmann wet his lips and sniffed. But his jaw was still defiant.
Sam remembered Peter’s e-mail which Steph had faxed from London – the suggestion that he too had had to sacrifice a loved one.
‘Ilse . . .’ Sam murmured, not quite believing what he was thinking.
The leathery head turned to look at him, eyes as lifeless as lead.
‘She found out about you. Was that it?’
There was no response. Sam realised he was looking at a monster.
‘You feared she would betray you . . . So you killed her. For the sake of your dream.’
The old German’s eyelids drooped. He took in a breath deep enough to have been his last, then let it out again. He looked broken.
‘Well your dream is over Herr Hoffmann.’ Sam placed his hands on the table and leaned forward. ‘But you can still stop it turning into a nightmare. The smallpox. Tell us where it is. Tell us who’s got it.’
Slowly Hoffmann pulled himself up straight. It was clear he’d made a decision. ‘Give me some paper,’ he croaked. ‘I will draw you a map.’ He reached into his jacket.
Seeing the movement, the Inspektor raised the pistol again, then lowered it when the hand emerged with the pen. He produced a notebook from his pocket and passed it across.
‘I am like a painter or a poet,’ Hoffmann declared wearily. ‘My only weapon is my pen.’
He held it in both hands then, staring into the middle distance, slowly unscrewed the lid. He shuddered involuntarily, like someone about to have his teeth pulled. Sam saw the eyes tighten. Then the pen stabbed downwards. Hoffmann plunged its tip into his thigh and pressed hard on its end. They heard the click of a spring being released and watched the lined face contort with pain as the needle fired its lethal charge into his leg muscle. Sam lunged forward, but the syringe had already emptied itself.
‘Shit!’
The Inspektor got on his mobile to call for an ambulance.
Hoffmann shook his head. ‘There is no point,’ he breathed. ‘Three minutes and I shall be with my wife again.’ He panted for breath, as if drained of all energy. Then he turned to Sam. ‘So . . .’ he whispered. ‘Because of you, I shall be like Caspar David Friedrich. I will not smell the sea again before I die.’
Sam seethed at his own powerlessness.
‘Damn you, Günther.’ He grabbed the German by the shoulders. ‘Who’s got the smallpox? Max Schenk?’
Hoffmann reacted as if he hadn’t heard.
‘Tell me and save your sodding soul.’
It was pointless. Sam let go of him. Three minutes, he’d said. One gone already. He sat down in the chair opposite.
‘Was Schenk in this with you? His clinic you went to with your fake heart attack?’
Hoffmann frowned as if puzzled. ‘I don’t know any Schenk,’ he declared.
Sam read the man’s eyes and drew a blank. Hoffmann’s ability to claim black was white had been perfected over a lifetime. Impossible to tell if this was the truth.
‘Tell me about Harry Jackman, then. How much did he know?’
‘Harry. Poor Harry,’ Hoffmann mocked.
‘Did he know what was in the flasks?’
‘Of course. He had to make special arrangements for the flights.’
‘And calling it red mercury . . .’
‘. . . was his idea.’
Sam saw a wince of pain as the poison began to bite.
‘Why did you have him killed?’
Hoffmann’s face contorted and he clutched at his chest. Sam leaned forward.
‘Why did you kill Harry Jackman, Günther?’
Hoffmann shook his head, his wide eyes flicking from side to side as if no longer able to see. Indignation wrinkled his brow.
‘But I didn’t kill him,’ he protested hoarsely.
Then the eyes closed and his body sagged into the corner of the seat.
Three minutes. It had been less than two.
Other passengers were entering the far end of the carriage. The Inspektor shouted at them to leave. Suddenly the platform was full of uniforms. The assistance the policeman had called for on the way to the station had finally arrived. From somewhere not far away they heard a siren approaching.
Sam stood up straight, arms hanging limply by his sides, shaken to see the second of the instigators of this heinous plot die before his eyes.
There was a difference between the two men. Hoffmann had been proud of what he’d done to the end, whereas Harry Jackman had sought to distance himself from the crime. The claim of ignorance about the cargo’s destination, the clinging to the myth of it being red mercury – the old gun-runner had lied even with his final breath. Had Hoffmann’s last words also been a lie – tha
t Harry Jackman’s murder had been nothing to do with him? Instinctively Sam felt that at that last moment of his life the German had been speaking the truth. Why deny the charge after accepting responsibility for so many other killings?
Sam backed away as paramedics came pounding pointlessly along the aisle. Someone had hired Harry Jackman’s killers. And he still wanted to know who they were.
He left the carriage and stepped onto the platform. The machinery of law and order had taken over now. Finding those planning to use the smallpox in Greifswald would be up to the police. Officially, his role was over. He’d delivered.
He stood back from the train watching the men in uniform doing their work and waiting for Inspektor Pfeiffer to tell him whether he could be of further service to him.
He knew that by rights he should be experiencing a sense of satisfaction at this particular moment, but he wasn’t. Yes, they’d found their puppetmaster – but not all the puppets. Dr Max Schenk, virologist, had been doing business with Harry Jackman at a time when plans were being laid to create a biological weapons laboratory on Palagra. If it was a coincidence, then for Sam it was a coincidence too far.
Proving it, however, would be another matter.
23
London
Sunday
ON HIS RETURN to London the next morning Sam was driven from Heathrow airport to a block of mansion flats on the south side of Hyde Park. Duncan Waddell met him in the entrance lobby and took him through a security door into the corridor where the lifts were.
‘Belongs to the Ministry of Defence,’ Waddell explained. ‘Top brass live on the sixth floor, lesser mortals lower down. You’re on the first. The flat happens to be empty for the next month, which conveniently gives you time to sort yourself out. Don’t worry about security here. It’s quite enough to deter your Ukrainian friends. Your stuff’s been moved, by the way. There’s nothing left at Brentford or at that flea-pit in Ealing. Your clothes and personal effects are here. Anything larger has been stored for you.’
‘How thoughtful.’
Waddell’s glance said ‘don’t take the piss’. Keeping him hidden was for their own sake as much as for his.
The Lucifer Network Page 39
