‘What do you want a car for?’ Charles asked him, leaning against the open boot.
‘The professional always uses psychology,’ said Otto, poking inside his bag to make sure that he had all the tools that he wanted. ‘The people who set the alarms in that building used psychology; we have to use it in return. They are devious thinkers, and the only problem with devious thinkers is that they tend to assume that everybody else is a devious thinker, too. Well, on the first level, you have to be devious, to understand what traps they have set. But, on the second level, you must be straightforward and crude; because there is nothing that upsets the devious thinker like crudeness.’
‘You still haven’t told me what you want the car for.’
Otto slammed the boot of his car shut, and began to walk back towards the exit, with the loping gait of a hunchback. Charles followed him with his hands in his pockets.
‘We will gain access to the lobby by driving the car into the plate-glass window,’ Otto explained. ‘This will no doubt set off all the alarms, but so to my mind would any complicated and time-wasting tinkering. So it is better for us to be quick.’
‘Then what?’ asked Charles. ‘Come on, Otto, we’re only four blocks away from police headquarters. We’re going to have every flatfoot in Denmark down on our ears in five minutes.’
They reached the street, and began walking back towards Banegårdspladsen. Otto said, ‘Use your imagination, Mr Krogh. If you were to come across a car that had crashed into an office window, an abandoned car, what would you think had happened to the driver?’
‘I would assume that he had run off,’ said Charles. ‘Drunk, probably; that’s what I’d think.’
‘Precisely,’ said Otto. ‘You wouldn’t imagine for a moment that he had actually entered the building, for the purposes of burgling the files.’
‘You’re a brilliant man, Otto.’
‘You too have a reputation for brilliance, Mr Krogh. At the police headquarters, they still tell that story about you, how you caught that Soviet agent trying to smuggle his way back to Murmansk in a cargo of cheese. That was true, wasn’t it? Not just a yarn?’
Charles made a dismissive face.
They reached the offices of Klarlund & Christensen. There was still no sign of Jeppe, so they went across the road and had a schnapps at a small crowded bar called, to Charles’ perpetual amusement, the Mars Bar. The Danes seemed to have a thing about planets: two of the best hotels in Copenhagen were called the Mercur and the Neptun. Charles kept an eye on the street, and after a half-hour he saw a large black Lincoln Town Car draw up outside and park. Its headlight covers closed like sleeping eyes; then Jeppe climbed out, and looked around for them, with a worried expression on his face.
Charles went outside. ‘Jeppe! We’re here!’
‘Not drinking again,’ said Jeppe, testily.
‘Something to steady the nerves, that’s all, my dear fellow. Come in and have one yourself.’
Jeppe shook his head. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
They went back into the bar and found Otto. Jeppe said, ‘Just tell me what you want to do.’
Otto wiped his nose, and then he said, ‘You must drive the car diagonally across the street, as fast as you dare, and strike the right-hand door pillar with maximum force. That is all. Then you must run away from the car that way, across the street, while Mr Krogh and I make our entry. You must not look back.’
‘All right,’ said Jeppe, uncertainly.
Charles inspected the huge Lincoln sedan. ‘What is this, ’74, ’75?’
‘Birker told me ’74. Not that it matters. It goes well enough.’
‘What did he charge you for it?’
‘Twenty-seven thousand kroner.’
‘Robbery.’
‘Well, it was after hours. He was having his supper. He had to open up the showroom specially. And of course I had to pay him a few extra for keeping his mouth closed.’
‘Sounds like a friend.’
‘Let’s just do it, shall we?’ said Jeppe. ‘Otto, are you ready?’
‘I suppose so.’
Otto guided Charles across the street, and into the shadow of a doorway in the building right next door to Klarlund & Christensen. Charles felt like Harry Lime. They watched as Jeppe climbed into the Lincoln, backed it up a little way, and then waited by the opposite curb. The car’s 7-litre engine burbled menacingly through a ruptured silencer.
‘I hope this is a good idea,’ said Charles, affably.
‘Do you have a better idea?’ Otto asked him, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, with a muffled clanking of tools.
‘I don’t know. It seems kind of violent to me. I always thought you were the Harry Houdini of bagmen; not the Incredible Hulk.’
‘Sometimes, Mr Krogh, it pays us well to behave out of character.’
‘Whatever you say.’
Otto glanced quickly around the street; for a moment, there was a lull in the late-night traffic and it was relatively quiet. He lifted one hand, fingers spread, and then gave a quick, abrupt wave. The Lincoln’s tyres squittered on the road, its engine roared, and it surged diagonally across the street, bouncing up on to the curb and hurtling itself towards the glass façade of Klarlund & Christensen like a vast black killer whale.
The crash was ear-splitting. The heavy glass doors were wrenched from their hinges and sent shattering across the marble floor of the lobby; and then the stainless-steel doorframe collapsed, bringing down the huge sheet of plate-glass which was supported on the architrave. The glass smashed edgewise on to the pavement, and exploded like a bomb, showering Banegårdspladsen with thousands of glittering fragments.
Several passers-by turned in shock and surprise. Charles said, ‘Jesus,’ but Otto was already shoving his elbow and urging him, ‘Go, go, go. Into the lobby before anyone sees us.’
They ducked low behind the Lincoln, their feet crunching on broken glass. At almost the same time, Jeppe opened the driver’s door on the opposite side of the car, and sprinted across the street towards Reventlowsgade, his tie flapping behind him, his head lifted, as if he were running a college 200 metres.
Charles and Otto crunched quickly across the lobby, and then slid behind a pillar to conceal themselves from the street while they looked around for the staircase. Already, six or seven passers-by had gathered around the Lincoln, and Charles could hear them saying, ‘Did you see that? It came out of nowhere.’ ‘Just like that, smack into the doorway.’ ‘But where’s the driver?’ ‘Drunk, most like.’ ‘I think I saw him. A kid. He was running off down that way.’
Otto touched Charles’ arm. ‘There are the stairs, look. If we keep low behind that desk, we should be able to reach them without being seen.’
Charles said, ‘I don’t hear any alarm.’
‘Ah, you don’t hear it, but there’s an alarm all right. The interesting thing to know would be where it’s actually going off. Don’t you worry, Mr Krogh, somebody has been alerted. So we must be quick.’
They made their way crab-fashion across the lobby until they reached the door to the staircase. Charles eased the door open while Otto awkwardly made his way through it. Then Charles followed, and carefully closed the door behind them. They could stand straight now, but Otto touched his finger to his lips to indicate that they should stay silent.
Charles was beginning to regret his dissolute lifestyle by the time they reached Nicholas’ office. While Otto unpacked his tools and laid them out neatly on Nicholas’ desk, Charles leaned against the wall, dabbing the sweat from his face and his neck with his bunched-up handkerchief. ‘I used to be able to run 800 metres without even panting,’ he said.
‘Let’s start with the files,’ Otto suggested. ‘If the files give us nothing, then we can start on the computer.’
‘You’re not even breathing hard,’ Charles complained.
Otto smiled, like a small rat who has just eaten a rather pleasant piece of Gruyère. ‘If you had a wife like mine, Mr Krogh
, you would keep fit, too. Better an hour spent exercising than an hour spent listening to all her complaints. Anyway, my back hurts me less if I exercise.’
Charles cleared his throat. ‘I guess the personnel files will all be in Klarlund’s office. He seems to be the Obergruppenführer around here.’
Guided only by Otto’s subdued flashlight, they walked through the deserted offices until they reached the door marked Hans Klarlund, Direktor. The door was locked, but Otto picked it so deftly that he might have had a specially-made key. ‘Nothing special, an Ingersoll 5-lever.’ He zipped up his little black leather case of picks.
At night, Klarlund’s office looked even more severe. Charles went over to the window and peered down into the street while Otto inspected the light-grey filing cabinet. There were red and blue police lights flashing across Banegårdspladsen, and even through the double-glazed windows, Charles could hear the honking of sirens. Otto said, ‘This filing cabinet is unmarked. What are you looking for?’
‘Anything on office personnel; or on somebody called Nicholas Reed.’
Otto picked the locks on the filing cabinet, one after the other, and rolled out the drawers. ‘There it is. You can take a look for yourself.’
Charles squatted down in front of the bottom drawer. He leafed through sheaf after sheaf of architectural plans, building permissions, diagrams, Xerox prints, and correspondence. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know they were thinking of building a new hotel on Nørre Søgade.’
Otto was sitting on the windowsill like a crookbacked crow, waiting for Charles to finish. ‘Who’s this fellow Nicholas Reed?’
‘That’s what we’re here to find out,’ Charles told him.
It took him almost fifteen minutes to go through the whole cabinet; but even though there were detailed personnel files Andreas – Wuppe in the top drawer, there was no mention whatsoever of anybody called Nicholas Reed. Charles pushed the drawers back in with a sniff of resignation, and dusted his hands together. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘you can lock it all up again now.’
‘Do you want me to try the computer?’
‘I think we’re going to have to. It’s an IBM 2000.’
‘Mr Rifbjerg told me that. Don’t worry about it. I went through the IBM 2000 at the Forenede Danske Motorejere last year, specially for Mr Rifbjerg. He was very satisfied.’
‘Come on, then.’
Charles opened the door of Hans Klarlund’s office, but as he did so he caught the faintest clicking sound. He waved Otto back, and said, ‘Ssh. I think I heard something.’
Otto immediately switched off his flashlight. They waited, holding their breath. Charles could hear his Seiko watch, ticking away the seconds. He looked back at Otto, and Otto made a questioning face.
‘It sounded like a door being closed,’ whispered Charles.
‘Maybe a draught,’ Otto suggested.
Charles opened the door a little wider. The corridor appeared to be deserted. There was no sound now but the distant swishing of traffic down in the street; all the police sirens had been silenced.
‘How would anyone know we were up here?’ asked Charles.
Otto said, ‘It’s quite possible they have photo-electric beams all over the building. We could have been setting off more alarms, just by walking down the corridor.’
‘All right,’ said Charles, after a while. ‘Let’s get back to that computer terminal. Do you think you’re going to need very long?’
It depends how well they’ve concealed the information you want; if it’s stored in the computer at all.’
‘Well, let’s get to it,’ Charles told him.
They walked quickly and quietly back to Nicholas Reed’s office. When they reached it, however, Charles felt a sudden tingle of alarm. The door, which they had left wide open, was now almost completely closed. He held Otto’s wrist, and lifted one finger to indicate to him that he should hold back, and stay silent. They both listened for a while, but then Otto whispered, ‘It must have been the draught. I must get back in there. My tools.’
‘Okay, but gently,’ Charles cautioned him. He wished that he had reminded Jeppe to bring him that gun. He used to be quite good at unarmed combat, a rather disorganized combination of karate, kung-fu, and bear-wrestling, but he hadn’t trained for so long that he doubted whether he could handle anybody meaner than a grade-school kid with glasses. He could have done with Roger right at this moment, blonde wig and all, if only for physical reassurance.
Otto approached the door to Nicholas’ office, and touched it softly with his fingertips. It opened a little way, and then struck something, and juddered to a stop. Otto turned around and said, ‘There’s something behind it. A chair, or a coat-stand. You didn’t knock anything over when you came out, did you?’
Charles shook his head. Otto gently pushed the door again; and again it stuck.
‘I think we’d better get out of here,’ said Charles. ‘Come on, Otto; Jeppe can put in a chit to buy you some more tools.’
‘It’s the police I’m worried about,’ said Otto. ‘Inspector Willumsen will only have to take one look at those tools to know who they belong to. That will mean jail for me, for certain; and trouble for Jeppe, too.’
Charles regarded the door with a puckered, indecisive expression. Then at last he said, ‘Okay. Give it a try. But take it easy.’
Otto reached around the door, keeping his eyes on Charles all the time. ‘It feels like a chair,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, it is. Somehow it’s fallen against the door and—’
He let out a whoop of pain and surprise. ‘Aaaaaahhhhh!’ he screeched, and his voice was as high as a woman’s.
Charles stumbled forward. ‘Otto? Otto? What? What is it?’ He seized Otto’s left arm and tried to pull him away from the door.
‘Don’t pull me!’ screamed Otto. ‘Don’t pull me!’ He was shuddering like an epileptic, and staring at Charles wild-eyed and contorted. ‘Don’t pull me! Don’t pull me!’
Charles yelled, ‘What? What is it?’ but Otto was beyond telling him. Charles took two or three quick steps back across the corridor, and then charged at the door with his shoulder, colliding with Otto and the door and the chair behind it and with somebody else who was standing behind the door, too. Otto let out a piercing shriek that was so high-pitched that Charles didn’t know if he had actually heard it or just felt it cut through his brain.
Charles tumbled into the room, staggering, overbalancing, and hitting his shoulder against the side of the desk. He turned around, winded, and saw Otto standing in the open doorway, trembling all over, and holding up his right arm in agony and terror. From the elbow upwards, all the flesh had been stripped off, so that he was holding up nothing but glistening bloody bones, radius and ulna, twisted with sinew. His right hand had been shredded into a distorted claw. Blood was splattering everywhere, with a noise like a running tap left to splash on to a carpet.
Charles stared desperately into the shadows behind the door, gasping from fright and sudden exertion. And slowly, the door was eased back again, so that he could see who it was who had mutilated Otto so ferociously, and how.
It was a huge, bulky figure of a man; and even though Charles couldn’t see his face in the darkness, he knew at once who it was. The man raised both fists in front of him, and between those fists coiled a gleaming circle of wire, tinged russet with blood. The man said nothing, but let out a deep, volcanic growl, and moved towards Charles with the terrible inevitability of a dark wall of lava.
Otto made no sound at all, but slowly and carefully sat down on the floor, still holding up his fleshless arm as if it were some kind of grisly trophy. Blood puddled all around him. Charles said, ‘Otto! Otto, hold on! Everything’s under control!’
Otto said nothing; but the huge man advanced steadily on Charles, twanging the wire between his fists so that it made a tensile, steely sound; and grumbling still, deep in his throat.
Charles moved cautiously round behind the desk. The man came after him, twangin
g the wire. Charles feinted to the left, and the man feinted with him. Charles felt within him that dark surge of total panic that he had first experienced in Korea, that rainy afternoon when he had been surrounded by enemy troops at Changjin Reservoir, 1952. No way out, not this time. Because now he was faced not with untrained Korean recruits, but with Krov’ iz Nosu, old Nose Bleed himself.
He feinted to the right. The huge man followed him, still flexing his deadly length of wire. Twing, twing, twing.
‘I might have guessed that you’d be here,’ Charles said loudly, in English.
The huge man didn’t answer, but watched him out of the obscurity of the shadows with emotionless, glittering eyes. Over by the doorway, Otto had started to moan, a low, subdued, agonized moan; a moan that told Charles just how much his injury had begun to hurt him. Krov’ iz Nosu must have wrapped that wire viciously tight around Otto’s arm when he had reached inside the room to remove the chair; wrapped it so ferociously that when Charles had at last forced open the door, all the flesh had been suddenly stripped away from Otto’s bones, like an electric cable stripped of its vinyl jacket. Otto’s days as a safebreaker were certainly over for ever: he would be lucky if he lived. His brachial artery was pumping wildly, and he was too shocked to press it, so that it closed. Charles couldn’t help Otto: not yet. Krov’ iz Nosu was moving around the desk towards him, his burned face at last illuminated by the streetlights, and there was no question at all that he intended to kill them both.
Charles warned, ‘You come any nearer, I’m going to give you a hard time.’
Krov’ iz Nosu didn’t respond; all that Charles could hear was his harsh, uneven breathing. He was more like an automaton than a man; a killing machine of muscle and twisted tissue; a thing that had forgotten how to be human. Somewhere, at some time, Krov’ iz Nosu had lost the sensitivity that distinguishes a human being from a robot. Perhaps it had happened when his face and body had first been splashed with molten metal. Perhaps it had happened during his endless skin grafts, and surgical reconstructions. Perhaps it had happened afterwards, when he was trying to build his body into the most powerful physical structure that had ever been known. All Charles knew from his CIA files was that Krov’ iz Nosu was more powerful than any Olympic weight-lifter; more adept at martial arts than any ninja; and that he had no compunction at all about killing his fellow human beings as bloodily and as mercilessly as possible.
Sacrifice Page 13
