`So that's why Priwall Island is cut in half — with the Soviet minefield belt extending across its middle?'
`Exactly. At least the western channel to Travemünde is under Western control. So passenger ships from Sweden and Finland can cross the Baltic and berth there. It's one of the weirdest spots on earth. And that, I remember reading, is where Dr Berlin has his residence,' Tweed remarked.
`The odd thing is he only spends part of his time there. He's like a grasshopper. I remember some of the old Kenya hands used that very word. Hops all over the world, they said. But no one knew where..
`Then you'd better find out. I think we are coming in to the outskirts of Lübeck. I wonder what it holds for us?'
The taxi ride from the Hauptbahnhof to the Hotel Jensen was only a few minutes. They could have walked it. Approaching the bridge crossing the river on to the island Lübeck sits on, they passed a curious pair of medieval towers, leaning precariously and topped with witches' hat turrets.
`The famous Holstentor,' Tweed remarked. Lübeck's trademark. That and marzipan...'
They met the blonde-haired woman as they carried their cases inside the Jensen. In her early forties, Newman estimated, she was tall, slim and had a pointed chin and startling blue eyes which stared straight at him.
He stood aside to let her pass and she smiled, still staring, then disappeared into the outside world. Newman looked back at her and the man behind the reception counter grinned.
`You know her, sir?' he asked in English.
`Unfortunately, no. She's staying here?'
`Oh, yes. A guest each year during the summer season. That is Diana Chadwick. A very popular lady...'
`With any normal man, I should imagine...'
`I shouldn't say it, perhaps.' The man paused and smiled again. 'Very popular with most men, yes. But not always so popular with the members of her own sex. They fear the competition, I sometimes think.'
`Diana Chadwick,' Newman repeated while Tweed filled in his own form. 'I've heard that name somewhere...'
`She used to be a famous society beauty in Africa many years ago.' He smiled a third time. 'Not too many years, I hasten to say...'
`Not Kenya by any chance?' Newman asked.
'I think possibly it was Kenya. Go to Travemünde, ask some of the British boating crowd there. She spends a lot of her time with them. Thank you, sir,' he said to Tweed, and pushed the pad towards Newman for him to register.
General Lysenko had insisted they moved their centre of operations to a fifth-floor office in the seven-storey concrete block of a building in Leipzig. He stood by the window now while Markus Wolf arranged his files brought up from the basement.
`I felt like a bloody mole trapped underground in that basement,' he snapped. 'We're likely to be here sometime, I take it.'
`Munzel can move very quickly,' Wolf replied in his slow deliberate voice. 'Witness how he dealt with the British agent, Fergusson, and that piece of garbage, Palewska. On the other hand, with a man like Tweed he will take his time. Patience is so often the key to success, I find.'
The Intelligence chief glanced at Lysenko to see if he had got the message. No, he hadn't, he decided. He explained at greater length.
`First, Munzel has made his second report via the Eichholz watch-tower. He has signalled the arrival of Tweed at the Hotel Jensen in Lübeck. We spun out a string for Tweed to follow — and he is following it. Second, Munzel will want to study his target, get to know his habits, his way of going about things.
Only when he has a complete picture of Tweed will he strike.
And in any case, Balkan will soon arrive in Lübeck. Our eagles are gathering...'
`There is a time limit.'
`No, General, there is no time limit.' Wolf's graven image of a face became bleaker. 'From my informant inside the Berliner Tor in Hamburg I hear both the deaths of Fergusson and Palewska are regarded as accidents. That shows Munzel's great competence. It is only this pest of a Federal policeman, Kuhlmann, from Wiesbaden, who is unconvinced. A clever man, Otto Kuhlmann …'
'He may have to be eliminated...'
`God forbid!' Wolf was appalled. 'An intimate of Chancellor Kohl himself? I understood from you the General Secretary warned there must be no incidents — only accidents.'
'And yet,' Lysenko sneered, turning away from the window, 'you tell me Munzel is an expert on accidents...'
'Bonn would never believe Kuhlmann had an accident. More than that, Kuhlmann would smell Munzel as coming from the DDR a mile off. Fortunately he has no suspicions in that direction.'
'And why is Munzel known as The Cripple? He's as fit as a Nazi storm-trooper. Looks a bit like one.'
`Because he often adopts the guise of a cripple on a mission. Who suspects an apparently blind man? Or a man in a self- propelled wheelchair? It is some such technique he will use when he eventually deals with Tweed. Now, if you don't mind, I'll continue arranging my files...'
`Ah, the files. Yes, do be sure they are in order,' Lysenko urged in a sarcastic tone.
For the next week Tweed seemed to Newman to have lost his sense of direction and purpose. They wandered round the island of Lübeck in the sunshine and the heat which had become torrid. Lübeck was full of holidaymakers, which worried Newman. Too many crowds.
Mostly Germans, they sat at pavement cafés, drinking and chatting. The Jensen was a small, well-run establishment and Tweed's window overlooked the twin towers of the Holstentor across the river. Across the road from the hotel pleasure boats moored and picked up passengers for river cruises. It was a lazy, relaxed atmosphere.
Tweed spent some time talking with the Jensen's manager, a man who liked the English and was both shrewd and knowledgeable about conditions on both sides of the border. Newman got to know the blonde woman, Diana Chadwick, who wore her hair short and reminded him of pictures he'd seen of girls in the '30s before the war.
`You simply must come to Travemünde,' she said to him over a drink outside the Jensen as they sat at a pavement table. 'There is the most divine crowd there. Boaty people and tremendous fun. You'll get an idea of what life used to be — when every day we enjoyed ourselves. None of your creepy machines — computers or whatever they're called...'
`They
are
called computers...'
`And if you live in England now they have you all listed in one of their beastly machines. No privacy any more. Just like a police state, I say. Credit cards and all that. Came from America, of course. Everything awful comes from America. I hate the place.'
`You have been there, then?'
'Once. New York. Those dreadful canyons. Why go to Arizona — or wherever the Grand Canyon is? New York is full of them. I did have the most marvellous time, actually. Everyone asked me to lots of parties. But I felt I was an exhibit. "Look, we have a Brit. girl. Isn't she quaint? Love to hear her talk — so different from us." ' She finished her Bloody Mary and said yes, she'd love just one more. 'So different from us,' she repeated. 'Thank God, I thought. Who'd want to be like you?' She smiled and studied her companion. 'Bet you think I'm the most awful snob. Which I am, of course...'
'You mentioned Travemünde,' Newman reminded her. 'Isn't that where Dr Berlin lives?'
'Only part of the year. He's away at the moment. Expected to join the fun any time...'
'Where is he then?'
`God knows. He goes off without telling a soul where. But he has his refugee work. He's bonkers over that. Can't understand why. People must cope on their own. I've always had to...'
'Where were you born?' Newman lifted his glass to her.
Diana Chadwick had slim, well-shaped legs, a small waist and a good figure, not over-full. She wore an attractive summer dress with polka dot design, a high neck and a pussy bow. Very feminine. Her bone structure was well-defined, a straight nose above a firm mouth suggesting character, a trait reinforced by the pointed chin.
Her most striking feature was her sapphire blue eyes which held a hint of wickedness which also showed when she smiled and stared direct at Newman. He thought he could listen to her soft voice all night long. Above all it was her personality, her air of cool assurance which appealed.
`Hampstead, London,' she said, knocking ash from her cigarette into the tray. `My father was in the Colonial Service — so we moved around the world from place to place. My education was, to say the least, spotty. A term in Kuala Lumpur, another in Hong Kong, then on to Nairobi in Kenya. Both my parents were killed in a car crash when I was eighteen. By nineteen I was married. It was in Kenya where I first met Dr Berlin. He wasn't much older than me — but even by then he had become a legend.'
`Quite a coincidence — that you should bump into him again here in Lübeck of all places...'
`Mr Newman.'
`Bob will do...'
`Diana. Bob, would you by any chance be interviewing me — doing a piece on Relics of the Empire?'
`I'd hardly call you a relic...'
`You're dodging the question.' She waved her cigarette — held in an ivory holder — at him, took the sting out of her remark with her smile.
`No, I'm just enjoying talking to you. I haven't written one piece for a newspaper in over a year..
`Why not? All that money from your bestseller make you lazy?'
`My wife died...'
`I'm sorry to hear that. I have a gift for saying the wrong thing. I'm sure people ask me to parties to hear me put my foot in it. I say the most outrageous things. I'm going to say one now. Are you looking for a new woman?'
`I might just be doing that...'
Her complexion was flawless, Newman thought. Her skin was dead white. On the chair beside her rested a wide-brimmed elegant hat of straw. Another touch of the 1930s. And the tropics. No girl worth her salt ever exposed her skin to the rays of a Nairobi sun.
`Then again,' she said lightly, 'you might be after an interview with Dr Berlin. Very difficult. I might be able to help you if that is what you're here for...'
`Thank you. I'll bear your offer in mind. Why are you staying at the Jensen when your friends are out at Travemünde?'
`To get away from them, of course!' The wicked smile again.
`I like to be on my own from time to time.' She glanced down. `Damn! I've got some drink on my frock...'
Frock
. Newman had only read the word in novels written twenty years or more ago. A German at the next table, a tall blond man of thirty or so, handed her a glass of water.
`Thank you so much,' Diana said. 'That's just what I need...'
`Glad to be of service. Any kind of service...'
`Oh, yes?' Her expression froze and she used a paper napkin dipped in the glass to dab at her dress. The German pushed back his chair, grinned again at her and strolled off.
`A regular charmer,' Newman observed.
`That's Kurt Franck. I saw him arrive at the Movenpick, carrying his bag inside. No, I don't know him. I know of him. He's started hanging round the crowd out at Travemünde, trying to ingratiate himself with them. I think he's a con artist — probably lives off dowagers. Gigolo...'
Newman looked up as Tweed emerged from the hotel. `Off somewhere?' he asked.
`Thought I'd take a walk through the town. It's like a furnace inside.'
Newman introduced him to Diana Chadwick. Tweed took her hand and noticed its beautiful shape, long-fingered and not too wide. The lightest tone of pink nail varnish None of your blood-red horror.
`And are you also on holiday, Mr Tweed?'
`Trying to relax, have a bit of a restful time. For a change.' `I'll come with you for that walk,' Newman said, pushing back his chair. 'Stretch my legs...'
`Maybe you would care to accompany us, Miss Chadwick?' Tweed suggested. 'A little feminine company would cheer me up no end.' He caught Newman's expression. 'Probably have the same effect on Bob, too.'
`I'd love that.' She stood up and pulled on her wide-brimmed hat. 'Two escorts..' She was openly flirting with Tweed. 'I count this my lucky day...'
It went on like that for another ten days; Tweed mooning round the island, looking at the ancient buildings restored to their medieval glory, strolling along the river banks where trees overhung the placid water while power cruisers and more humble rowing boats moved in the torrid atmosphere as the heatwave continued unabated.
`What the hell do you think you're up to?' Newman demanded as they sat one afternoon in Tweed's bedroom, gazing out of the window at the jostling crowds below. 'You told me to hold back on checking Dr Berlin, you haven't made a single positive move to find out what is going on. Two men were murdered back in Hamburg — or have you forgotten?'
`No!' Tweed's tone was curt. 'And I was very fond of Ian Fergusson, so your comment is not welcome..
`Sorry, but I'm getting restless...'
`You have Diana to while away the days...'
`She spends half her time with you...'
`Not my choice. Hers.' Tweed was amused. His tone changed. `If you are getting on edge, what effect do you think it is having on the opposition? Fabius Maximus, the ancient Roman general, called it masterly inactivity...'
`You mean this is deliberate?'
`Oh, quite deliberate. I have been led to Lübeck on the end of a carefully paid-out rope. I get here. I do nothing. Imagine the pressure building up on the opposition. Soon they must show their hand.'
`If it works..
`It will work. I know my friends across the border.'
Ten
`What the bloody hell is Tweed up to?' Lysenko paced round the spartan room on the fifth floor of the building in Leipzig. `You tell me!' he shouted at Wolf, seated behind his desk. 'You and your patience..
`I must admit his behaviour...'
`His lack of it...'
`I was going to say...' Markus Wolf, a tall, heavily-built man who towered over Lysenko, stood up, thrust his hands inside his trouser pockets, and also began walking. 'I was going to say,' he repeated, 'that I'm beginning to be puzzled. Munzel has reported daily over the phone via Hamburg. Apparently Tweed does nothing except act like a tourist. He hasn't even been near the Lübeck-Sild police complex outside the town. And Balkan is now in place..
`We gave him the lead to Dr Berlin through Palewska — a totally reliable contact from his point of view. He hasn't gone near Travemünde — that is, if Munzel is to be trusted and is doing his job.'
`Erwin Munzel,' Wolf said stiffly, 'is the best we've got. I chose him personally for this assignment..
`Munzel is a sadist.'
`Well, he may have his peculiar side. I grant you he enjoys his work. But the point is he is first-rate at his work.'
`Then what are we going to do?' raved Lysenko. 'Soon I shall be getting a phone call from the General Secretary. What do I say to him? Tweed has come, Tweed is having a good holiday. Mikhail Gorbachev will appreciate that, I can tell you...'
`Gorbachev is your responsibility,' Wolf said sharply.
`And killing Tweed is yours. You are in the front line...'
`Oh, I do realize that,' Wolf said ironically. 'Leave all the dirty work to the East Germans! Then if anything misfires the Kremlin has clean hands on the international front. So far, Tweed has stayed in crowded areas — always accompanied by that foreign correspondent, Newman. He doesn't go out after dark and eats dinner at the Jensen's restaurant where he's staying. What chance do you think Munzel has
had?'
`That's your problem. You're in charge of the executive side of the operation. You are using your own people. My role is that of observer. I repeat, what are you going to do?'
It had become you, not we, Wolf noted cynically. He adjusted his heavy horn-rim glasses, sat down behind his desk and re-read the latest report while Lysenko prowled and fumed.
`As I said,' he began eventually, 'Balkan is in place...'
`And that was my idea years ago,' Lysenko reminded him. `One of the most audacious manoeuvres my organization has carried out. A bigger Philby at the centre of Tweed's outfit...'
`Whose identity I have protected,' Wolf replied waspishly.
`Agreed. But we must use him to the fullest extent — take a risk if we have to.'
`We'll speed things up,' Wolf decided. 'I'll get a message to Munzel. But I'm never happy about rushing things.'
`It is your decision,' Lysenko replied artfully.
`And I am capable of doing just that — taking a decision. We will get things moving within the next few days...' Wolf put his hand on the receiver and lifted it.
`Dr Berlin has arrived, Bob,' Diana said. 'He is holding one of his parties and you are invited...'
Mid-morning. They were sitting at one of the sidewalk tables outside the Jensen having a pre-lunch drink. It had become part of their daily routine. To sit and chat in the warmth before the great heat built up. Diana wore her straw hat tilted at an angle to shade her face. She looked up as Tweed came out.
`You're invited to a party, Tweedy...' Newman hid a smile. She was the only person he'd ever known get away with calling him that. Tweed sat down and began cleaning his glasses on his handkerchief.
`That's nice. Thank you. Tell me about it...'
`Oh, you don't thank me. It's Dr Berlin's party as I was just explaining to Bob.' She looked at Newman with mock severity. `I have to tell you there are conditions. No interviews. You will be the only reporter there...'