Close Call

by Stella Rimington

  ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘This is the first time in months that I’ve been out of that violent, uncultured dump where you make us live, and now you say I have to stay in our hotel room?’

  Milraud’s shoulders slumped. Annette looked at him despairingly. ‘I’m not asking to go dancing, Antoine; just a decent meal in a restaurant where the food isn’t Spanish. I thought that was the whole point of my joining you here in Germany.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Then what’s changed?’

  He sighed. ‘I think they may be onto me.’

  Annette looked at him, disbelieving. ‘Who’s they?’ she demanded.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Does it matter? The French – it could be our old friend Martin Seurat. Or the English. Or any number of countries. It doesn’t really matter. This is Western Europe, not South America. Countries here cooperate.’

  ‘What makes you think they’ve spotted you?’

  ‘I can’t be sure, but I had a meeting in Paris, in the Luxembourg Gardens. Somebody interrupted us – a young man. There was something odd about him, so we broke off the meeting. I haven’t been able to make contact since.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me when it happened? I wouldn’t have come.’

  ‘It was too late by then and you were already en route. That’s why I told you to change the hotel and use the other passport. If they did spot me, they’ll have a picture, and it won’t have taken them too long to trace where I was staying in Paris, to get the name I was using and from that discover the flight I took to Berlin. As long as you left no trace at the last hotel of where you were going, then we should be OK for twenty-four hours or so – long enough for the meeting tomorrow. It’s critical I attend that; if it goes well there will be other larger deals, and then we’ll have enough money to retire somewhere nice and not to have to go on taking all these risks.’

  Annette was shaking her head. ‘I told you not to go to Paris. But would you listen? Of course not. You seemed to get pleasure from thumbing your nose at your old colleagues – even if it meant both of us ending up in prison. How could you?’

  She looked on the verge of angry tears, but Milraud had seen this display often enough before to feel unmoved. It was a bit rich of Annette to complain about their being forced to live in Venezuela in one breath, then in the next to moan about the risks.

  He said patiently, ‘I am doing my best, Annette. And if it comes good … Believe me, there’s a lot of money at stake or I wouldn’t have taken these risks.’

  ‘But what if they are already onto you? What if they picked you up when you got here?’

  It was a possibility he didn’t want to face and certainly one he didn’t want to discuss with Annette. ‘I’m sure we’ve got at least twenty-four hours. Time for me to make this deal and get us out of here.’

  ‘To go where?’ Annette said, in a whine, her voice like a distant but approaching siren.

  ‘Just in case they’re watching the airports, I think we should take the train to Poland. If we don’t hang about there, we should be safe to fly back home.’

  ‘Home? You call Caracas home?’ The sirens in her voice were at full blast now.

  ‘It’s home for now, Annette, and at least it’s safe. The point is, if things go well tomorrow, then we can start to think about living somewhere else.’ He raised a hand to stave her off before she could get started. ‘No, not Paris, that’s true. But somewhere better than Caracas. A place where you can feel you’re back in civilisation.’

  ‘Like where? You said yourself all the Western services are on the same side.’

  He sometimes forgot how quick his wife was. He said, slightly faltering, ‘I thought we might try South Africa.’

  She stared at him, then laughed disdainfully. ‘Cape Town here we come, eh? Well I can’t see that’s much better than where we are now. Believe me, if that’s the only choice on offer, you’d better just buy one ticket. I’ll come back to Europe and take my chances.’

  He didn’t respond to this; after all, it was not a new threat. He inched along the bed and reached for the phone on the bedside table. ‘So what do you want from room service?’

  Chapter 14

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ Martin Seurat demanded.

  Isabelle sighed. Martin had seemed edgy throughout the flight from Paris. Normally a calm man, he had barely sat still, crossing and uncrossing his legs, folding and unfolding a copy of Le Monde. Isabelle had tried to divert him by asking about his daughter, now studying at the Sorbonne and the apple of her father’s eye, but he had cut off the conversation and stared moodily out of the plane window.

  Now sitting in the BfV conference room with Isabelle and the German investigating officer, his tension was even more obvious. She sensed that Martin’s excitement at the prospect of finally getting his hands on Antoine Milraud was dwarfed by his fear of letting the man slip through his fingers.

  Seurat went on, ‘We know where Milraud is, so why don’t we arrest him at once? If we hang around he’ll disappear again. We don’t know whether he saw the surveillance last night but he obviously suspected something in Paris. It sounds as if his wife, Annette, has joined him here; he must have contacted her, told her to change hotels, and to use a different name. He’s clearly thinking we’re not far behind him. There’s no problem with the warrant, so let’s get on with it before they vanish.’

  The German said mildly, ‘We can do that, of course. If that’s what you want.’ He looked pointedly at Isabelle, as if to say, This is your problem, not mine.

  ‘Martin, you know as well as I do that we are not the only people interested in Milraud,’ said Isabelle. ‘And we’ve only found him at all because of the information we got from the British. At the very least, we need to consult them before making an arrest.’

  Seurat was shaking his head, more from frustration than disagreement. He looked at the German. ‘Is that what you think?’

  The German frowned and shrugged his shoulders. He was a youthful-looking man, a classic German with light blonde hair and pinkish skin which was turning red as he tried to follow the argument between his two French ­visitors. ‘Well, as I said, it’s really up to you. We have no information against the man but the warrant is outstanding, and the request to help came from your country.’ He paused. ‘The matter is complicated by the fact that he is not alone.’

  Seurat said impatiently. ‘There’s a warrant out for his wife as well. She’s helped that bastard every step of the way.’

  The German acknowledged this with a nod, but said firmly, ‘Nevertheless, since other countries’ services are involved, I would feel more comfortable knowing they agreed with the action we decide to take.’

  Seurat looked exasperated, but when he turned to Isabelle there was resignation in his eyes. ‘All right. Ring London. Let’s talk to Liz.’

  Liz Carlyle was at her desk in Thames House when the call came through from Berlin. She had heard about the German surveillance from Isabelle the previous evening, when she’d arrived back from Paris. So she knew that Milraud and Annette had changed names and hotels and that they must suspect that their pursuers were not far behind.

  Now Isabelle explained the dilemma. ‘Martin is keen to go in now and arrest the pair of them, but I felt we must consult you first. If we do arrest him he’s most unlikely to talk about what he’s doing here and you’ll lose your lead to his contacts. What do you think, Liz?’

  Martin Seurat was tapping his fingers on the top of the conference room table and he suddenly leant forward and spoke into the speakerphone. ‘Liz, you know that Milraud has broken French law in too many ways to list. Larceny, kidnapping, conspiracy to murder. These aren’t trivial offences. We at the DGSE want to see him extradited and put on trial, and who can blame us?’

  Isabelle said, without looking at Martin, ‘He’s a big fish all right. And of course we have our national priorities. But perhaps we need to take a wider view.’

  Isabelle sensed that Martin was bristling
. He ignored her raised placatory hand, and said, with indignation in his voice, ‘What you call our national priorities ignores the fact that Milraud has been involved in arms deals all over Europe. Indirectly, he’s killed people on at least three continents. It also ignores the fact that Milraud was instrumental in kidnapping an MI5 officer in Northern Ireland, and bringing him to the south of France. If we hadn’t moved in, I doubt very much that that officer would still be alive.’

  Isabelle said calmly, ‘But there may be other sharks swimming with him that we can catch. That’s what you think, Liz, as I understand it. And the Americans too. Is that not correct?’

  To Isabelle’s relief, Liz Carlyle broke in, her tone brisk but conciliatory. ‘I have something to propose. But first let me ask our German colleague, are you confident of keeping Milraud under surveillance?’

  Isabelle thought, can a fish swim? No intelligence officer worth his salt would say no to that question. Where was Liz going with this?

  The German replied stiffly, ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good,’ said Liz, ‘then I advise the following: we keep tabs on Milraud, and obviously his wife as well. But if he goes off to meet anyone connected with his activities in Paris, it seems to me very unlikely that Annette will go with him. He wouldn’t want to involve her or expose her to the risk. I’m sure she knows exactly how he makes his living, and we know that when he escaped from us in the south of France several years ago, it was with her help. But I can’t believe she’s actively involved in his deals, whatever they are.’

  ‘So?’ asked Seurat impatiently.

  Liz said patiently, ‘So, if he goes out and leaves her in the hotel, then that should be the time for you, Martin, to go in. After all, you know the woman well, don’t you?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘So you can work on her. You can explain that if she tells us who Milraud is working with, and helps us move up the ladder of this deal, then we can see that things don’t go too hard on her. Or her husband.’

  ‘I’m not prepared to promise that. I want things to go hard for the bastard.’

  ‘Martin. It’s up to you what you say. We all know you won’t have any influence over what happens to them when they’re arrested.’

  There was silence while all the participants considered this. At last Seurat stirred. Leaning towards the speaker on the table he said, ‘All right, Liz. You win – you, and the Americans. But let’s not lose him, OK? Nothing personal, but he’s caused me a lot of trouble. I couldn’t bear it if he had the chance to cause any more.’

  Chapter 15

  The Schweiber Mansion at the eastern end of Unter den Linden had once housed the private collection of Ernst Schweiber, a German manufacturer who became fabulously wealthy in the late nineteenth century. He and his sons after him had used their wealth to amass an eclectic collection of paintings, furniture and objets d’art from all over the world, which they had housed in their grand baroque mansion. But the mansion had had the misfortune to be in the path of the Red Army when it arrived in Berlin in 1945.

  The Schweiber family had by then been long dispersed, some to other parts of Europe, some to their deaths in concentration camps. By the time the Russians arrived, part of the collection had already been removed by the Nazis. What remained was taken as booty by the conquerors, some of it to find its way eventually into galleries and museums in Moscow and Leningrad.

  After the Berlin Wall went up, the Schweiber Mansion found itself in East Berlin, no longer grand but grimy, broken-windowed and pocked by shell holes. The house became home to a department of the Stasi and was feared and avoided as far as possible by East Berliners. As part of the restoration of East Berlin, the building had fairly recently been renovated to something of its former grandeur. But now, instead of sitting in an avenue of equally grand mansions, it rested uneasily between two glass-fronted office blocks, surprising the tourists who came to see what was at least a part of the Schweiber Collection, gathered together again from around the world and returned to Berlin after much diplomacy and haggling.

  If Hans Anspach had known about the diplomacy and haggling, he would probably not have thought it worthwhile. He was gazing at a rather gruesome painting of someone being flayed alive. But in any case his mind was not on the art, for though the headphones he was wearing looked like those the museum supplied to visitors who wanted a commentary as they toured its collection, what he was hearing through them had nothing to do with art.

  ‘Still here,’ came from Beckerman, who was a few rooms away. Taking a couple of casual-looking steps, Anspach could see, through an arch, the back of Antoine Milraud’s head. The Frenchman was standing with half a dozen other visitors in front of a Corot which had lately made the news – to the embarrassment of the German authorities, it was now thought not to have been part of the Schweiber collection at all but to have been plundered by Field Marshal Göring from a French aristocrat in Burgundy, whose descendants were threatening to sue for its return. Beckerman added, ‘No movement.’

  It had been easy enough to follow Milraud to the gallery. He had left the hotel half an hour ago, dressed in a white roll-neck sweater and a grey tweed jacket. He had walked, without looking around, straight down Unter den Linden, then fifty metres along a side street to the Schweiber Collection. With two teams of three on his tail, there had been no chance of losing him, and with the museum busy but not too crowded, it was simple enough to keep tabs on the man as he wandered through the ground-floor rooms.

  He had been in the building over half an hour now, and there had seemed no particular rhyme or reason to his progress. He had looked at paintings and porcelain and classical sculptures. To Anspach’s experienced eye, he seemed to be killing time rather than appreciating the objects.

  But the Corot was holding his attention far longer than anything else had. Was he waiting for someone? Was this the meeting point? Anspach edged into the next gallery, from where he could get a wider view of the room where Milraud stood.

  He noticed the black man as soon as he walked into Milraud’s gallery. Berlin was full of students from Africa, but this man was no student – he was tall, slim and beautifully dressed in a tailored grey wool suit, a cream silk shirt, and a tie. The fact that he was probably the only man in the gallery wearing a tie would have made it remarkable enough, but this was clearly a designer tie, broad, silky, with a brightly coloured pattern. His figure was elegant but his height and broad shoulders suggested there was strength behind the smooth façade.

  The man didn’t glance in Milraud’s direction; he moved towards the far wall, where a group of young Chinese tourists stood giggling in front of a large nude. As Anspach watched, he saw Beckerman stroll in from the other gallery; he had joined the back of a tour group that gathered briefly at the Corot before moving in Anspach’s direction. The group, with Beckerman in tow, walked into the gallery where Anspach stood and gathered at another picture.

  Anspach glanced again in Milraud’s direction. The Chinese had moved on from the nude, but where was the black man? Then he spotted him; he had been hidden by another group listening to an English-speaking guide. Now he walked up to the Corot and stood next to Milraud, with only a foot or two of space between them. Both were examining the Corot as if they were experts, and when the Frenchman turned his head slightly Anspach could see the two men were talking.

  He drew back until he was out of sight, then looking down he said softly into his microphone: ‘We have contact. Newcomer. Black male. One hundred eighty-five centi­metres tall, slim, smart grey suit.’

  The two men stayed standing, side by side, until suddenly the black man turned and walked out of the room. Milraud waited a few minutes then left the room too, going quickly towards the museum’s exit. As he left the building he headed off in the direction of his hotel, watched by Anspach, who had joined Dimitz in an unmarked car parked in the car park outside the building. Three spaces away a second car was parked containing two more officers of the BfV; a third team member was busy buyi
ng a newspaper from a kiosk outside the entrance of the museum.

  ‘We’ll take the Newcomer; you take the main man,’ ordered Anspach on the car’s radio. ‘When you’ve housed him at the hotel, come and help us. If he goes somewhere else, stick with him.’

  Anspach settled down to wait for the black man he’d labelled Newcomer, and a few minutes later he emerged, with Beckerman fifteen metres behind him, examining a map of Berlin with apparent concentration. Anspach waited until Newcomer had walked a couple of hundred metres away from Unter den Linden, towards a shopping district, busy on a Saturday morning. When it got hard to see him in the crowd on the pavements, Anspach nodded at Dimitz, who started up the car and drove in the direction their target had gone. They could see Beckerman, struggling to keep up with Newcomer, who was striding quickly past the shops as if on his way to keep an urgent appointment.

  They drove past both men, and Dimitz pulled up, just short of a pedestrian-only area. Anspach hopped out, waved to Dimitz as if to thank him for the lift, and walked swiftly into Nadelhoff’s department store, an ­old-fashioned emporium that was adjusting badly to its new concrete and glass quarters. Inside he loitered on the ground floor, looking at men’s shirts near the front windows, waiting for Newcomer to walk past. When he did, Anspach abandoned the shirts and left Nadelhoff’s, just in time to see his target disappear through the swing doors of a shopping centre – six stories of small independent shops known collectively as the Boutique Mall. Whoever this elegant black man was, he seemed to know his way around this part of Berlin.

  Anspach spoke into the mike under his lapel. ‘He’s gone into the Boutique Mall. I’ll try and keep with him in there; park the car and come round to cover the rear entrance. Beckerman, watch the front. Control: get the other team over here as soon as they’ve seen their target home.’

  Anspach spotted his target easily enough as soon as he went into the Mall. He was in a record shop on the ground floor, leafing through CDs. Anspach walked past and went into a shop opposite; from there he could see the door of the record shop.