‘God,’ said Esther.
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ the preppie-looking man reassured her. ‘He loves it. He does it over and over.’
It was then that the crew-cut woman lifted her fourth and final nail, and showed it around to the audience. For some reason, a hush of anticipation fell over the club, and there was no sound but the tap-tapping of the drums. The woman stalked up to the spreadeagled man, and placed the point of the nail against his rubber-masked forehead.
‘Doesn’t she just make you wet yourself?’ panted the preppie-looking man. ‘She won’t really do it, of course, but can you imagine what it’s like, being nailed to the wall by your balls, feeling that nail against your forehead.’
Without any warning at all, the crew-cut woman hammered the last nail straight into the spreadeagled man’s head. They heard it knock against the skull, then crunch against the cinder-block. The spreadeagled man trembled violently, and then remained still. There was no blood at first, but then a single crimson line ran down his nose and dripped on to his scrawny bare ribcage.
The silence and the fear were immense. The crew-cut woman stood defiantly for a moment with her hands on her hips, and then she pointed directly at Esther, and gave her a snarling, toothy grin of triumph.
Oh God, thought Esther, in a surge of sickness. Oh God, it’s Wally. Then all the lights went out, and the club was a screaming chaotic tangle of arms and legs and shoving bodies, and Esther found herself jammed and shoved against one of the cinderblock walls, grazing her arm and her knee. She didn’t even realize until she managed to push her way out to the staircase that she was screaming herself.
*
David Daniels, at that moment, was just stepping out of the shower to answer the phone. Normally, he would have let it ring, but he was expecting Esther to call him as soon as Wally had passed on his information. He hadn’t relished the idea of Esther going to the Hellfire Club any more than Esther had. He had read an article about it in Playboy once, and from what their correspondent had written, it had sounded like a halfway house to hell and damnation. Wrapping a dark blue Turkish towel around him, he padded through into his dressing-room, picked up the phone, and said, ‘Yes?’
‘David? This is Jack Levy.’
‘Sorry I took so long,’ said David. He bent down slightly, so that he could see himself in the mirror. He raked his fingers through his wet hair. ‘These days, it’s usually some lawyer wanting money. Either that, or somebody griping about their taxes.’
‘David, I’m afraid I’m going to have to beg off.’
‘Beg off? Beg off what? You mean this Gringo business?’
Jack’s voice sounded peculiarly distant, as if he didn’t really want to talk about Gringo at all. ‘I’m real pushed right at the moment, David. I’m all tied up with a big story on the budget deficit. I don’t think I’m going to be very much use to you.’
‘Listen,’ said David, ‘you haven’t been warned off, have you?’
‘No, no. It’s just that I can’t spare the time. I’m sorry. I should have told you when you first called me. I feel guilty about that.’
‘Jack—’
‘I’m sorry, David. That’s the way it is.’
David blew out his cheeks in resignation. ‘Okay, if you can’t you can’t. But do you know somebody else who might be able to help?’
‘David, take my advice,’ said Jack, ‘just leave the whole thing alone. It doesn’t amount to anything. Just back off and leave it alone.’
‘You’ve been threatened, haven’t you?’
There was a sharp crackle on the line. David suddenly realized what was going on. He said to Jack, without altering the tone of his voice, ‘How are things coming along with that new apartment of yours?’
Jack was perplexed at this abrupt change of subject. ‘Well, fine,’ he said. ‘It’s coming along fine.’
‘Tell me about it. What colour are you going to paint the den?’
‘What?’
‘Tell me about it,’ David persisted. ‘Go on, I want to know everything. What you’re going to do with the kitchen, whether you’re going to have blinds or drapes. Come on. Jack, I want to hear it all.’
At last. Jack realized what David was asking him. Hesitantly, he said, ‘Well… we’re going to paint the den in eggshell blue. And the hallway… well, we’re going to leave the hallway white. And the stairs—’
He kept on talking, while David carefully set his telephone down on the bed, and tiptoed across to the window. He peered across the street, and saw the Thunderbird straight away; with the man sitting behind the wheel wearing earphones. If he hadn’t been looking for him, of course, he never would have given him a second glance, but there he was, placidly listening in. He was so calm, in fact, he was eating a sandwich, and there was a plastic cup of coffee perched on the dashboard.
David went back to the phone, and said, ‘Go on, Jack, tell me more.’ Then he quickly struggled into his jeans, pulled a T-shirt over his head, and went to the bedside table. He took out his .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, and swiftly walked out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out of the side door of the house. He felt the short grass prickle beneath his bare feet as he ducked low behind a long beech hedge, and then crossed the street twenty yards behind the Thunderbird, so that he could come up on it from behind. Those ’74 Thunderbirds had a substantial blind spot to the rear quarter, and with any luck he would be right up on it before the driver realized he was there.
Raising his gun in one hand, he made his way quickly along the grass verge until he reached the back of the car. The man was still sitting behind the wheel, munching his sandwich, and listening to Jack telling nobody at all that they were going to move that large mahogany bureau into the study. David crouched next to the car, grasped the gun in both hands and stuck it in through the open passenger window.
‘Freeze,’ he ordered.
The man stared at him for a moment, then shrugged, and laid his half-eaten sandwich on top of the dashboard, next to his coffee. ‘Okay, so I’m frozen.’
‘Take off those earphones.’
The man unhooked the earphones, and put them down carefully beside him on the passenger seat.
‘Now you have ten seconds to tell me who you are, and what the hell this is all about.’
The man sniffed, and wiped his nose with his finger. ‘Can I show you my ID?’ he asked.
‘Don’t show me, just tell me.’
‘My name is Frederick B. Timberland, and I am an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’
‘And what the hell are you doing, listening in to my phone calls?’
‘I was told to.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘I don’t know. Nobody ever tells me things like that. My instructions are, sit here and listen in. That’s all.’
‘All right, Mr Timberland,’ said David. ‘Show me that ID.’
Frederick Timberland lifted his ID wallet out of his shirt pocket between two fingers, and tossed it over. David opened it, left-handed, glanced at it, and then tossed it back.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘I want you to get back to your office, and tell whoever it is who sent you that all hell is just about to break loose. And I mean, all hell.’
‘Yes, sir. I got that.’
David stood up, lifting his gun. Frederick Timberland started his engine, poured the remainder of his coffee out on to the road, wedged his sandwich into his mouth, and drove off. David watched him go, then walked back to the house. Upstairs, Jack was still waiting on the phone.
‘Phonetap?’ asked Jack, hoarsely.
‘You got it. Some clown who said he worked for the FBI.’
Jack was silent. David could almost hear his embarrassment. After a while David said, ‘Are you still off the case? Or do you want to keep at it? This Gringo must amount to something. And believe me, I’m going to be calling Schachocis at the FBI just as soon as I put the phone down, and I’m going to give him hell.’
Jack said
, ‘I’d sooner forget it, thanks, David. You know how it is.’
‘I’m not sure that I do.’
‘Well, if you want to know the truth, there were threats against my wife.’
‘What kind of threats?’
‘Mutilation, that kind of thing. She’s scared to go out.’
David bit his lip. ‘Have you found out anything at all?’
‘Not that I want to tell you. But believe me, David, this is coming down from the highest possible level. If I were you. I’d be careful about stirring up too much of a stink with the FBI.’
David paused for a moment, then he said, ‘Okay, Jack. I understand. I’ll talk to you later. Maybe we can have dinner when I get back to Washington.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Jack, and hung up.
Almost immediately, as if somebody had been watching and waiting for him to finish his call, the phone rang again. David picked it up, wedged it under his chin, and said, ‘Yes?’
‘Senator Daniels?’
‘This is he.’
‘You don’t know me, senator, but my name is Jordan Crane. I work for the National Security Council; you can check my references if you so wish.’
‘Well?’ asked David, sharply.
‘Well, sir, I have been requested by Mr Morton Lock to call you and advise you that the investigations you are currently attempting to instigate are overlapping into an area of national security, and that he would very much appreciate it if you would desist for the time being. He says that if you wish to discuss the matter any further he will be glad to meet with you and talk it over.’
David said, ‘We’re talking about something called Gringo?’
‘I’m sorry, senator. I’m not at liberty to say.’
‘But that’s the area of national security which I’m supposed to be overlapping?’
‘That is related to the area, yes, sir.’
‘And I’m supposed to keep my nose out, even though one of my best friends has had his wife threatened with mutilation, and some goon from the FBI has been sitting outside my house, illegally tapping my telephone?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know anything about either of those incidents. But I’m sure that Mr Lock would be more than happy to make everything clear at a personal meeting.’
David said tautly, ‘You can tell Mr Morton Lock that until he comes around here and explains all this jiggery-pokery in person, and makes sure that Jack Levy’s wife gets an apology, and a promise that nobody is ever going to threaten her again, then I’m going to continue my investigations into Gringo and I’m going to make damn sure that I find out what it is, and why Mr Lock is so desperate to keep it under wraps.’
There was a short silence, and then Jordan Crane said, ‘I have been authorized to caution you not to do that, senator.’
‘Caution me? Caution me? What does that mean?’
‘It simply means that it would not be in your personal interests to carry your investigations any further.’
David said, in a low, unsteady voice, ‘You try and stop me, Mr Jordan Crane.’ Then he banged the phone down, and sat on the edge of his bed, his cheek muscles working with anger and emotion.
He went downstairs and mixed himself a dry martini. As he was stirring it, the phone rang yet again. He picked it up, and said, ‘Yes?’
‘David,’ sobbed Esther. ‘David, you have to help me.’
Thirteen
He rang Jeppe for most of the day, once every twenty minutes, but there was no reply. In the end, he took a taxi around to Jeppe’s apartment on Halfdansgade, on the other side of Sydhavnen, next to the university, but nobody answered the doorbell, and strangest of all, there was no name-tag next to the mailbox. The summer wind blew across the street; the taxi waited for him, engine running, the driver watching him through the reflecting windscreen. Charles began to realize that Jeppe had probably gone for ever; disappeared into that mirror-world where spies and secret-servicemen go when their luck and their time runs out.
It was mid-afternoon. Charles had been listening to the radio all morning, and brought an early edition of Ekstra Bladet to see if there was any news about their break-in at Klarlund & Christensen, but so far there had been nothing at all. He had passed Klarlund & Christensen on his way to Jeppe’s apartment; the whole ground-floor façade had been boarded up with plywood, but workmen had already been cutting new glass. The Lincoln had been towed away.
Agneta had said to him that morning, ‘What’s wrong? You look worried, the same way you used to look in the old days.’
Charles had shrugged. ‘Something’s wrong here. Something’s all wrong. The trouble is, I don’t understand what it is. I can’t get my mind around it.’
‘Leave it,’ Agneta had urged him.
He had ruffled her pixie-blonde hair. ‘No,’ he had told her, in the gentlest of voices.
She had said, ‘It will lead only to trouble, I know it.’
Charles had nodded. ‘I know. But I think the trouble has happened already. All it’s doing now is waiting for somebody to find out what it is.’
The taxi crossed Langebro. Beneath the bridge, the waters of Sydhavnen sparkled bright cobalt blue, the colour of the sky. Clouds passed over Copenhagen’s spires and rooftops as stately and slow as dreams. Charles lit a cigarette, and the driver tapped the sign that told him no smoking. He said, ‘Forget it, I’ll walk.’
He paid the taxi and walked back along Hans Christian Andersens Boulevard smoking ostentatiously, with his hands in his pockets. He had known agents and security men to disappear before. One of his earliest mentors in the CIA, Dashley Pope, had completely vanished at the same time as Jimmy Hoffa; and although Charles had spent months trying to pick up a lead on where he might have gone, the result had always been the same. A mirror facing a mirror; a corridor that led to nowhere at all.
He bought another copy of Ekstra Bladet, and quickly leafed through it. No news about the Klarlund & Christensen break-in at all. He tossed the newspaper into a litter bin, and carried on walking. Jeppe had been running away from the crash, the last time that Charles had seen him. So what had happened to him after that? Had someone been watching the Klarlund & Christensen building all along, and caught Jeppe as he tried to get away? Or had he been fingered by the used-car dealer he had gone to, and picked up later on? That was more likely. The Lincoln could have been identified in minutes by anybody with access to the police computer, and after that it would only have needed a heavyweight visit to the dealer, and Jeppe would have been nailed.
The question was: who had the authority to eliminate a senior officer in the Danish security services? Krov’ a Kysheknyik had been a high-ranking killer, no doubt about it, but he wouldn’t have been able to waste a man like Jeppe without sanction from higher up. Charles, of course, had been a little different. Charles was retired now, no longer officially attached. If someone from the KGB or the GRU decided that his presence in Copenhagen was irritating, and eliminated him, not even the slightest of diplomatic ripples would disturb the dark meniscus of international security. Nobody would seek to avenge him. There would be nothing but mild relief that he had gone.
Charles reached Larsbjørnstrade hot and sweating and feeling like a drink. He clumped heavily upstairs, and was just about to push his key into the lock when he stopped, and lowered his arm, and then stepped back. He had a system with Agneta, a throwback to the old days when he had never quite known who might come around to pay him a visit. They kept a tiny piece of white celluloid, the end piece snipped off a shirt-collar bone, tucked into the side of the lock. If anyone unwelcome called, and forced their way in, Agneta was to slip the piece of celluloid out of the side of the lock, so that Charles would be warned before he opened the door. The piece was missing; and there was no sign of it on the floor, so it couldn’t have simply dropped out. Charles wished very much that Jeppe had been able to get him that gun before he had disappeared.
He walked quietly along the corridor until he reached the stripped-pine d
oor at the end. This led out on to a small balcony at the back of the house, which had originally been crowded with rubbish, but which Agneta had cleared and decorated with clay geranium pots. Occasionally, on warm evenings, they took a bottle of wine out there, and looked out over the jumble of Studie Strade and Set Peders Strade, and beyond to Sct. Jørgens Sø. Now Charles stepped out there, closed the door cautiously behind him, and then hoisted himself up on to the wrought-iron railing.
He could just reach the guttering along the orange-tiled roof if he stood on the railing on his toes. He didn’t dare to look behind him; it was too far down to the cluttered yard below. He didn’t dare to think of the age of the railings, either, or how rusted and weak they might be. He could hear traffic in the streets all around him, and the wind whirring through the ventilator on top of the chimney. He thought: Jesus, Krogh, you’re too old for this kind of thing. You can’t even lift your own weight any more. But he gripped the guttering, and swung, his shoes scrabbling against the wall, and at last, grunting, he managed to lift himself up so that the top half of his body was over the edge of the roof, his arms rigid as if he were exercising on the parallel bars.
Now, he thought to himself. Get your leg up now. Because if you don’t you’re going to drop down on to the balcony; and if you drop, they’re going to hear you. He didn’t allow it to enter his mind for a moment that the slip of celluloid might have fallen out of the door by accident, and that there was nobody in the apartment at all, apart from Agneta. In the CIA, they taught you to think negative. Imagine the worst, then double it.
He heaved one foot up on to the gutter, then the other, and at last he was up on the roof. He was panting and gasping, and he knew that he wasn’t going to be very much use if it came to a fight. God, for a gun!
He eased his way across the tiles. They made a gritty, grating sound beneath his weight. Halfway up the roof, there was a skylight which overlooked the kitchen and most of the breakfast area, and he hoped that from there he would be able to see what was happening inside the apartment.
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