Rhinoceros (28 page)

'A glitch . . .'

'Listen, do! The Internet is linked to the phone system.'

'Intriguing.'

Annoyed, Paula gave up. When she reached her room
she dived into the bathroom to take the shower she would have welcomed hours earlier.

In his room Tweed postponed the shower while he called
Cord Dillon at his private number in his apartment.

'What is it, Tweed?' a sleepy voice enquired. 'It's morn
ing here - and I'm not an early riser unless I have to
be.'

'Mark Wendover. What kind of a detective agency does
he run in New York?'

'Corporate work. Embezzlement. Someone dipping their
hand into the till. In a big way. How is Mark?'

'Thriving.'

'Is that all? Good. Thank God

Tweed took out his doodle pad, scribbled Zurcher
Kredit, put a large loop round it, joined Rondel's loop
to it, t
hen Mark's. He stared at the pad for a few minutes,
the non-working end of his pen in his mouth. He grunted, then went into the bathroom for his shower.

Earlier that evening, after shouting her head off at Tweed, Lisa had stormed back to her room. When she opened the door she saw an envelope had been slipped under it into the room. She took it out of the envelope, saw it was a hotel record of a phone message.

Call me urgently. Go to the main railway station to make
the call. Rocco.

She left her room immediately. Leaving the hotel, she
walked. Every now and again she paused, fiddled with one
of her sandals as though it had picked up a stone. This gave
her the chance to glance back, to check she wasn't being
followed.

The station wasn't crowded when she arrived. It was
Germanic, vast and with a very high roof. She went into
an empty phone cubicle, called the number. A familiar
voice answered.

'Lisa, would you like to make a hundred thousand
marks?'

'What did you say?'

'I think you heard me. I want you to gain all the
information you can from Tweed from now on. How
many in his team? Where is he going? In Hamburg.
Outside Hamburg? And the only person you report this
information to is me . . .'

'Just a minute,' she said. 'Someone is trying to get
in here.'

She turned round. A man she had never seen was
holding a white envelope. He thrust it into her hand, said
it was for her, then departed.

'You've got the envelope,' the voice on the phone commented. 'Now count the contents. I'll wait.'

She opened it. A thick sheaf of 1,000 DM banknotes. She
checked. 10,000 DM. She checked again. No, 100,000
DM. In English money, roughly £30,000. She slipped the envelope inside her handbag.

'Remember, you report only to me . . .'

She had never had so much money in her life.

CHAPTER 17

Tweed and Paula were having dinner in the Grill Room.
They had the only table occupied on the balcony, which
gave them a good view down into the restaurant below.
There were just a few guests, even though they were on
the edge of July.

'Not so many people as I'd have expected,' Paula
commented. 'I think it must be the heat - it has even
penetrated up here.'

She was eating scrambled eggs - not on the menu but
she'd explained to the waiter she wasn't very hungry owing
to the heat.

'Most unusual, Madame, for Hamburg,' the waiter
replied. 'A heatwave is something we rarely experience.'

'I see Newman is sitting at a table over by the wall and
has Mark with him,' Tweed remarked. 'As we came in
I heard Mark asking if he could join him, as he hated
eating alone.'

'Keeping up the pretence they don't know each other,'
Paula observed.

'And Marler is having sandwiches and a drink in the
lounge by himself. From that position he can observe
anyone who comes in here. Doesn't miss a trick, our
Marler. Don't look now, but you'll never guess in a
hundred years who has just sat down at a table by himself.
By the wall,' said Tweed.

'Tell me - or I'll have to look.'

'The Brig. Bernard, Lord Barford. Wearing a white
dinner jacket.'

'On a sweltering night like this?' Paula exclaimed.

'Oh, typical of him. You dress for dinner whatever the
temperature. He'll have done that hundreds of times in
the mess when he was in the Army.'

'Heavens.' Tweed's observation had just sunk in on
Paula. 'He's the last man on earth I'd have expected to
turn up here. What's going on?'

'I haven't any idea.'

'You don't believe in coincidences. And Hamburg
wasn't one of the places Aubrey, his drunken son, included
when he told me over lunch at Martino's where the Brig
often flies to. I wonder why he keeps Hamburg so secret?' Paula said.

'I simply couldn't even guess.'

Tweed was making short work of his Dover sole. He
was famished. Both of them had avoided alcohol, were
drinking water to ward off dehydration.

'Has he spotted us?' Paula enquired as she finished off the last of her scrambled eggs.

'No. He didn't look up here as he came in. Now he's concentrating on reading some documents.'

'He probably will see us when we leave, go down the steps from this balcony.'

'We'll try and choose a moment when he's surrounded
by waiters serving him. They do have plenty of waiters.'
Tweed put down his knife and fork, checked his watch below the table cloth.

'What's our next objective - after we've visited Dr
Kefler?'

'To locate and identify Rhinoceros. Coffee? Dessert?'

'Not for me,' Paula decided.

'Then now might be a good moment to leave.'

As they descended the stairs into the main restaurant,
Paula had a good look at the unexpected arrival. A covey
of waiters hovered round him as they served a steak.
She thought he looked very alert, his hand movements agile, very much in command of himself, sitting erect as a ramrod.

'He didn't see us,' Paula said as they walked into the
lounge.

'Don't kid yourself. He's a spry bird. Doesn't miss much.'

Marler was seated by himself, shielded from other guests
by a palm tree. Tweed walked slowly, dropped a crumpled
piece of paper into his lap, continued walking.

'What was the note about?' Paula wondered.

'To tell Marler we're going out to see someone. And also that Harry is going to guard our rear.'

Newman, as arranged, caught them up as they entered
the hall. He kept his voice down as he spoke.

'Mark handled that cleverly. Anyone near us who knew
English would have heard him talking about New York,
then asking what my job was. He's astute. Look who's here.'

They were about to walk down the steps into the street
when Lisa appeared from nowhere. She was dangling her
shoulder bag by its strap and smiling as though all was
well with the world.

'Going somewhere?' she asked Paula.

'Just a long stroll,' Tweed replied quickly. 'We have
something we want to talk over in confidence.'

'Can I come with you?'

'You look really tired,' said Paula, having a go at her.
'I'd suggest you go to bed and get some sleep . . .'

They reached the street and started walking along the
pavement towards the landing stage. Lisa ran after them,
caught up with Tweed.

'I really am sorry I blew my top. I didn't mean—'

'Lisa,' Paula snapped, 'go back and get some sleep.
Didn't you hear Tweed say we had something confidential
to talk over?'

Lisa blinked, turned on her heel, went back and climbed
the first few steps. She stayed there, waited a short time,
then peered after them.

'That wasn't very nice of either of you,' Newman pro
tested. 'I could have shooed her off much more politely.'
He frowned. 'I sense good relations with Lisa have broken
down. Had a row?'

'She was very rude to Tweed in his room,' Paula told
him.

'It isn't that,' Tweed said, glancing over his shoulder. 'I
want to see how much of an effort she'll make to get back
into our good graces. And here's a taxi coming . . .'

With the aid of a map he explained to the driver exactly
where they wanted to be dropped. The driver looked at
them as though surprised, then nodded.

'Don't think he thought it was a good idea,' Paula
whispered.

They stopped talking and Paula gazed out of the window
as the cab drove at speed deep into Hamburg. Huge solid
buildings loomed above them and there was no one else
about. At long intervals the streets were lit by tall lamps and then they again plunged into shadows. Paula slipped
her right hand inside her shoulder bag to make sure she
could grab her automatic quickly. Tweed was following
their route, studying his street plan.

'They go to bed early,' Newman commented. 'Not a
soul about.'

'They work hard, get up early,' Paula replied, to say something to keep her nerves in check.

The cab stopped in the middle of nowhere. Weird
modern buildings hemmed them in. The driver looked
back uncertainly, kept his engine running.

'Is this where you want to get off?' he asked in Ger
man.

'It is,' Tweed assured him.

'You're certain?'

His manner was uneasy. Paula noticed he had kept the
doors locked. He peered at her, frowning.

'This is exactly the point,' said Tweed, handing him the
fare plus a generous tip.

'Thanks very much,' the driver said. 'You are coming
back?'

He scribbled his name, Eugen, on a card giving the
firm's name and phone number. Tweed slipped it into
his wallet. The cab disappeared quickly.

'I heard a motorcyclist behind us,' Newman remarked.
'Now he's stopped somewhere.'