`I'm sure you would. Now, let me have the tickets for Hamburg, foreign currency, travellers' cheques, etc.' As she took a folder from a locked drawer he threw the question at her.
`During my recent interviews, did you notice any common link?'
`They've all worked in the field. None of them are desk types who haven't a clue as to what it's all about...'
`True. Go on.'
`That's it,' Monica said, her brow crinkled.
`They all have just one European language in common which they all speak fluently. German.'
`Is that significant?'
`How do I know what is significant? It's early days yet.. The phone rang, Monica answered and spoke briefly, then pulled a wry face.
`Company?'
`Yes. Your favourite person. Howard is on his way up now.'
`I really wouldn't have thought this Hamburg affair required your august presence,' Howard pontificated in his most lordly manner. 'Let Hugh Grey handle it — after all, the incident did occur in his sector.'
`The incident, as you call it, involved the death of one of my top men. A second-hand view isn't good enough.'
`I'd hardly call Hugh second-hand. You make him sound like a used car.' Howard chuckled and glanced at Monica expecting a tribute to his wit.
'I'm catching a Lufthansa flight. It's all arranged. And the PM has sanctioned the trip...'
`Oh, my God!' Howard clapped a theatrical hand to his domed forehead. 'Not another of her bloody directives, I trust?'
`Your trust is misplaced.' Tweed sat back in his chair and stared bleakly at his chief. 'And I suspect Fergusson was on to something big — otherwise, why murder him?'
`Don't let's over-dramatize, old boy.' Howard, six foot tall, wearing a new made-to-measure chalk-stripe suit, perched his behind on the arm of an easy chair. 'We don't know that for sure — from what Hugh has just told me...'
`Hugh knows damn-all. I'm keeping the wraps on this one.'
`Hugh's a good chap,' Howard protested. 'And I heard in Paris from Pierre Loriot the quiet streets are empty. The Russian laddies have all gone home — doubtless to listen to Uncle Mikhail and make their number with him.'
`Pierre said that?' Tweed leaned forward, intrigued by Howard's news. The reference to 'quiet streets' was parlance for the Soviet embassies located in discreet areas. 'That was his report,' Tweed pressed. 'What was his opinion?'
`There has to be a difference?' Howard studied his manicured nails, his plump face smug.
`Well, was there? You tell me.'
`I suppose you could say there was a subtle shade of difference. Pierre did say the pregnant silence — his phrase — worried him. Just his opinion though. Pierre isn't happy without something to worry about. Keeps him late at the office — away from that awful wife in Passy. He'd read the telephone directory rather than go home before ten...'
And so would you, matey, Tweed thought, but didn't say so. It was well-known Howard's relations with his rich wife, Cynthia, had become distant. 'Clear out of sight,' was Monica's comment.
If there's nothing else...' Tweed began.
`Think that's all.' Howard stood erect, straightening his tie. `Sorry about Fergusson, and all that. Goes with the territory, of course...'
`Not with my territory,' Tweed shot back as Howard strolled to the door and left the room. He looked at Monica. 'Hamburg next stop …'
Six
July 10 1985
. Flight LH 041 arrived at Hamburg dead on time at 1255 hours. Tweed peered from his first-class seat through the window as the machine descended through a grey vapour. The greyness dissolved, Germany spread out a few hundred feet below.
He studied the jigsaw of cultivated fields and plantations of firs and pines. Narrow sandy tracks led inside the woodlands from the outside world. Peninsulas of housing estates poked into the fields, then the countryside was inundated by the urban tide.
More trees as the plane dropped lower. He remembered this approach to Hamburg, one of his favourite German cities. A stranger would never realize he was passing over the city. In the seat behind him Newman was not peering out of the window. His eyes were flickering over the other passengers, searching for anyone taking an interest in Tweed. They landed.
Tweed was the first passenger to walk down the mobile staircase, Newman the third. They had travelled from Heathrow as though they had never met. Tweed was standing by the carousel, waiting for his two cases, when Chief Inspector Otto Kuhlmann of the Federal Police joined him.
`Got a light?' Kuhlmann asked in German, holding his cigar.
`I think I can accommodate you,' Tweed replied in the same language. He lowered his voice as he flicked on the lighter and the German bent forward. 'I have two cases, as you suggested over the phone...'
`Point me to the first one. I'll take that.'
When the first case appeared Kuhlmann leaned forward and heaved it off the moving belt. He then had trouble relighting his cigar with Tweed's lighter. The second case appeared, Tweed grabbed it, accepted the lighter from Kuhlmann and they walked away together from the crowd gathered round the carousel.
Anyone watching would have assumed the two men had travelled together on Flight LH 041 from Heathrow. Outside the reception hall Kuhlmann led the way to an unmarked police Audi, they both climbed into the back and the driver left the airport.
`That little manoeuvre may have covered your arrival,' the German commented as they drove along tree-lined streets. Entering Hamburg was like driving into the country.
`
May
is the operative word. Where are we going first? I have a reservation at the Four Seasons …'
`Living high?'
`The best hotel is the last place the opposition will expect to find me. And I have an escort following in a cab. Robert Newman, the foreign correspondent.'
Tweed produced a photo of Newman from his wallet which Kuhlmann hardly glanced at. He took a deep drag at his cigar and shook his head.
`I'd have recognized Newman without a picture. I saw him back at the carousel. I was going to check his presence with you. If it's OK by you the first stop is the hospital where Fergusson was taken to and died. The doctor may be able to tell you something. Anyway, you're safe in Hamburg...'
`Let's just say I'm in Hamburg.'
The flight had still been in mid-air when the call to an apartment block in Altona, a Hamburg suburb, came through from London. The caller — from a booth inside the Leicester Square Post Office, which is actually off Charing Cross Road — spoke in German.
`Tweed is on his way. Flight LH 041, departed Heathrow 1120 hours, arrives Hamburg 1255 your time. Have you got that?'
`Understood. He'll be met at the airport. We have good time. Thank you for calling. Now we can have a limo waiting.'
Martin Vollmer, who occupied the Altona apartment, broke the connection, waited a moment, then dialled a number in Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border.
`Tweed is coming..
The wires continued to hum through a complex communication system across North Germany. Like a tom-tom beat the same message was repeated again and again. 'Tweed is coming...
Tweed is coming
... TWEED IS COMING...
By the time the flight had crossed the European coastline and LH 041 was over the mainland the phone rang in the bedroom of Erwin Munzel at the Hotel Movenpick, Lübeck. The blond giant had sat by the instrument for over an hour. He snatched up the receiver.
`Tweed is coming...'
The brief conversation ended, Munzel; registered under the name of Kurt Franck, left the hotel immediately and walked on to the main part of Lübeck situated on an island encircled by the river Trave. It was a hot day, the air was torrid as he boarded a bus for Eichholz.
Wearing jeans and a polo-necked cashmere sweater, he checked his watch as the bus left the island, drove over a bridge and headed east through a dull suburban district of four-storey apartment blocks.
In less than ten minutes he got off at the terminus. He had reached the border with East Germany — the no-man's- land which is a death-trap. A coach-load of American tourists escorted by the usual talkative guide stood staring east with all the fascination of ghouls observing a traffic accident.
Munzel pushed his way through to the front and gazed at the distant watch-tower. He checked his watch again and waited until it was 1.30 p.m. precisely. Then he pulled a red-coloured handkerchief from his pocket and slowly wiped the sweat off his high forehead. He repeated the gesture three times.
Inside the watch-tower one of the three guards stared through a pair of high-powered binoculars. He felt he could reach out and touch Munzel's forehead. Putting down the binoculars on a table he reached for the phone.
`That's Munzel reporting in,' he remarked to his companions.
The wires began humming in the DDR — the German Democratic Republic. East Germany. Within minutes, General Lysenko, seated at a desk next to Markus Wolf in the basement of a building in the centre of Leipzig picked up the phone when it rang.
He listened, said 'yes' or 'no' several times, then replaced the instrument. Typically, he kept the chief of East German Intelligence in suspense while he lit a cigarette fitted with a cardboard holder.
Markus Wolf, in his sixties, sat like a graven image, his horn-rimmed glasses perched on his prominent nose. Wolf had the patience of a cat playing with a trapped mouse.
`Tweed is coming...' Lysenko told him eventually. `So, we wait...'
`He has taken the bait. He has arrived in Hamburg. Soon we'll hear he has arrived in Lübeck.'
`After a while, possibly. I know Tweed. He is the most cautious and wary counter-espionage chief in the whole of the West. Do not expect too much..
`I expect Munzel to kill him.'
`Probably. Let us be patient. We must be even more patient than Tweed. The one who wins this duel will be the man with the greatest stamina..
`You are a pessimist..
`No, just a realist.'
The first man to receive the news from the phone box inside the Leicester Square Post Office, Martin Vollmer, waiting in his apartment at Altona, had made one further phone call after contacting Flensburg. Which is why a taxi with its
Frei
light doused had followed the unmarked police car from the airport to the hospital.
He parked at some distance from the Audi as Kuhlmann climbed out, followed by Tweed. He watched them enter the hospital and settled back to wait further developments. He was so intent on observing what happened beyond his windscreen that he omitted to check his rear view mirror.
Leaving the airport building, carrying his case, Newman at once noticed something odd. His whole experience as a foreign correspondent had trained him to spot the out-of-the-ordinary. He saw the Audi transporting Tweed turn out of the airport. Looking for a cab he also saw the taxi lacking the
Frei
sign illumination.
The odd thing was the vehicle was occupied by the driver alone. The coincidence was that this driver decided to leave the airport without a fare at the precise moment the Audi drove off.
Getting inside the next waiting cab, he handed the driver a ten-deutschmark note. 'That's your tip,' he said in German. `And I may add a bonus. Just follow that black Audi, please. You'll be helping the Drug Squad,' he added.
Newman kept a close eye on the Audi. This action automatically made him observe the cab which appeared to be following it. As they turned into the kerb by the hospital Newman warned his driver to stop immediately. This placed his vehicle a dozen metres behind the other cab now parked by the kerb.
He paid off his driver, stooped to pick up his case and noted the registration number of the waiting cab. Then he walked into the hospital Immediately his nostrils were assailed by the aroma of hygienic cleansing liquids. Newman detested all things medical. Still, he consoled himself as he entered the reception hall, it was in the line of duty. Damnit!
`I can have that cab driver picked up,' Kuhlmann suggested when Newman finished his brief report. 'We'll grill the hell out of him...'
`If I might make a suggestion,' Tweed intervened. 'Don't alert him. Have him followed, identified — if possible. But on no account should he be intercepted.'
`You're blown,' Kuhlmann warned: 'That driver could be our only lead to who organized the tracker — and from the airport. That is very serious. After the precautions we took. I'm telling you.'
Kuhlmann was short, broad-shouldered, had a large head and a wide mouth, his thick lips clamped on his cigar which was unlit. Dark-haired, his eyebrows were thick and his manner and speech suggested a very tough character. In his forties, Newman estimated.
`Not to worry,' Tweed said. 'And let's play it my way. Low profile. Incidentally, normally this would be a case for the local police. How was it they brought you in?' Tweed turned to Newman. 'Chief Inspector Kuhlmann is from the Federal Police in Wiesbaden.'
`Because they have a bright police chief here,' Kuhlmann told them. 'Name on the deceased's passport rang a bell. He put it through the computer at Cologne. Fergusson came up as one of your people. So, I phoned you. Which is why I'm here, why you are here. This case could have international implications...'
`Then the BND could get involved.' Tweed sounded bothered as he referred to the German counter-intelligence HQ at Pullach just south of Munich. 'Low profile,' he repeated.
`Let's go see the doctor who attended Fergusson,' Kuhlmann said impatiently. As they walked down a clinically spotless corridor he continued explaining. 'Two uniformed policemen on night patrol saw Fergusson's body floating up against the lock-gates leading from the Binnenalster to the Elbe. Hauled him out with a boat-hook, found he was still alive, rushed him to this hospital. He died an hour later..
`How did he come to get into the water?' Newman asked.
`Blow on the side of the skull. Could have slipped, caught his head on the stone wall before he hit the water, so they say. Accidental death would have been the verdict.' Kuhlmann chewed at his cigar, unhappy that he couldn't light up inside the hospital. 'Accidental death,' he repeated. 'Except your people don't have accidents. Here's the doctor's office. Schnell is his name. Speaks good English. Take your choice of language.'