The Lucifer Network (51 page)

What sacrifice? Had the maniac killed his own wife?

Then
Chin
up.
It annoyed him that he couldn't remember where he'd heard it.

‘Mind if I use your phone?'

‘Help yourself. Nine for an outside line.'

He rang the London number Stephanie had given him. It was a male voice that answered. He asked to speak to Julie.

‘May I say who's calling?'

‘Sam Packer.'

There was a teeth-sucking sound at the other end. ‘I'm not sure that . . .'

‘Just tell her I'm on the line and that it's important.'

He heard a clunk of the handset being laid down and the squish of rubber soles on polished floors. A couple of minutes later Julie's voice came on.

‘Sam? Are you all right?'

‘Fine. Look I've got some questions about Max.'

‘Okay.'

‘How did you two communicate? Was it ever by e-mail?'

‘Oh no. Max is a Luddite when it comes to new technology. He can't even use a keyboard.'

Sam's heart sank. ‘You sure about that?'

‘Totally. I've seen the way his eyes glaze over when confronted by a computer.'

‘Never mentioned something called “the Lucifer Network” to you?'

‘Nope.'

‘One other question.' It was his last hope. ‘Did he ever say
chin
up
?'

There was hesitation at the other end. For a moment Sam thought he'd struck gold.

‘Absolutely not,' she told him. ‘His English was terribly Germanic. Utterly devoid of phrases like that.'

‘Damn . . .'

‘You sound so disappointed.'

‘I am.'

She made sympathetic noises. ‘What's happened?'

‘I've a nasty feeling I've done my maths wrong, that's what. Two and two may not make five after all.'

‘Sam, I . . .'

‘Look, I've got to go. I'll ring you again when I'm back in London.'

‘Sam!'

‘What?'

‘There was something I wanted to tell you.'

He felt uncomfortable under Collins's penetrating glare. ‘Yes, but perhaps now isn't the best . . .'

‘I've seen him before, Sam.'

He felt an icy finger down his back. ‘Who?'

‘The man in your folder.'

Sam screwed up his eyes, trying to latch onto what she was talking about.

‘What folder, Julie?'

‘In your room at the
pension,
' Julie explained. ‘There was a folder with a photograph in it.'

Sam swallowed, not trusting himself to speak. He remembered emerging from the bathroom and seeing her poking around in his suitcase.

‘Somebody Hoffmann,' she went on, breathlessly.

‘Hoffmann,' he croaked. The world was turning upside down.

‘The face seemed familiar, but I couldn't think where I'd seen it. I've been puzzling over it ever since and come to the conclusion there's only one place it could have been.'

‘Where, Julie? Where've you seen him before?'

‘The Intercon bar. I'm 99 per cent certain he was one
of the men my father was chatting to when I joined him for a drink that evening a year ago.'

Yes, thought Sam. Harry Jackman had been right.

Julie
knows.

THE CLUES HAD
been there and he'd missed them.

Peter's paternalistic concern for the problems of his foot-soldiers – it bore Hoffmann's signature. Kovalenko's murder, done KGB style –
Stasi
style. The supposed heart attack that had left Hoffmann hale and hearty the next day – a carefully created alibi. And
chin
up.
Sam remembered where he'd heard it now. At Jo Macdonald's bedside. It had been ‘Johann' who'd told the Scotswoman to keep her chin up when his father was dying.

The embassy car hurtled round the Ring, the driver threatened with an unpleasant personal injury if he didn't push the speed over the limit this time.

Sam sat alone in the back, reliving his meeting with Günther Hoffmann three days earlier. His brain kept singling out other indicators he'd missed – the man's envy of the Austrians' freedom to be anti-Semitic – his blatant homophobia – his dislike of Arabs because of their music – his sympathy with those who wanted to keep Europe free of dusky foreigners. Taken separately, each had been a small thing, the mutterings of an elderly grump. But together they spelled out a man with the mindset of a Nazi.

And there were other clues. Fischer's comment that
Hoffmann had been more involved with Russian businessmen in Vienna than they'd first thought. And his view that if Hoffmann was making money from Russians, he would have been doing it to fund some cause he believed in.

And what a cause.

Sam groaned. Hindsight was a wonderful thing.

It was another of Fischer's snippets that was driving him now. The tip that Hoffmann spent most Saturday afternoons ‘researching German history' in the National Library.

The car swung through the neo-classical gateway of the Hofburg, the palace of the Habsburgs. To each side of the broad, gravelled road lay Heldenplatz, the square to the heroes of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Horse-drawn fiacres lined one side of the highway, their bowler-hatted coachmen holding the beasts' bucking heads while tourists clambered on board. Sam's embassy driver turned right and stopped beneath a statue of a prince on a prancing horse that was streaked with green. He nodded towards the curved, grey, colonnaded block facing them.

‘That's your Staatsbibliothek. Want me to wait?'

‘You bet.' Sam pushed open the door and slammed it behind him.

‘By rights I'd need permission to park here . . .' The driver's plaintive moan was lost to the breeze as Sam climbed the steps to the library.

One half of the barred bronze portal stood open. Beyond it a cavernous, stone-floored hall. At the far end were glazed doors made of carved oak, topped by a coat of arms. He hurried through into the library itself, a light and airy space, with a black-and-white tiled floor, stately marble columns and ficus trees in tubs. He felt the hair twitch on the back of his neck. He was getting close.

There was a security office on the left. A red-faced, potato-shaped guard leaned on his desk, eyeing all new arrivals with suspicion. Next to his window a display board listed departments. Halfway down was the name of the one Sam had guessed would be here. On the lower ground floor.

There was a warm, leathery smell about the building. A sign pointed to a spiral staircase. At the bottom was the book collection centre. Readers who'd placed orders were waiting on benches for their tomes to be retrieved from the vaults. Several glanced up, disturbed by Sam's hasty and breathless arrival. He stopped, looking for some sign pointing to where he wanted to be. Finding none, he asked at the collections counter. The middle-aged woman behind it indicated a corridor to the left. He hurried through a pair of swing doors and found the library's communications centre. Faxes and photocopy machines lined one wall. There was a desk manned by a grey-suited official, whose fingers clicked at a keyboard. Beyond the desk was the place Sam had guessed would be here, the Internet room from where ‘Peter' had controlled his small network of activists.

He stopped in his tracks. About a dozen PCs sat on tables, only one of them in use.

The old Stasi man sat hunched over the keyboard, his deeply lined, deceptively noble face sombre with concentration. For a split second Sam felt sorry for the man. He'd had a dream and it was about to end. Sam crept past and came round behind him. Over his shoulder he could see the Hotmail screen. Hoffmann was typing a message. Sam hovered, trying to see the words, but the text was too small.

Suddenly, sensing danger, Günther Hoffmann lifted his eyes above the screen and saw that the official behind the
payment desk was looking intently in his direction. Not at him, he realised quickly, but at someone standing behind him. He swung the chair half round, completing the turn with his head.

Hoffmann took in a sharp breath. The steeliness was gone from the slate-grey eyes. Sam saw a look of defeat. Then the old man swung back to the monitor and grabbed the mouse to block off the text on the screen.

‘No way,' Sam growled, springing forward to prevent him erasing what he'd written. He yanked at the chair, swinging it round again, jerking the mouse from Hoffmann's hand.

‘How's the heart, Herr Hoffmann? Or should I say Lucifer?' Their faces were inches apart.

Suddenly the German butted forward. Sam felt his nose crack. His vision exploded in stars. He reached blindly for Hoffmann's shoulders but the chair was already empty. He felt warm liquid trickle down his upper lip and pressed a sleeve against his nostrils. As his eyes cleared, he set off after Hoffmann, yelling at the official behind the counter not to touch the computer. The man grabbed a phone and began dialling.

Hoffmann was only seconds ahead of him. Back in the book collection room Sam saw the door to the staircase swing shut. There were gasps from the waiting readers at the blood spattering his front.

Once on the staircase, he heard Hoffmann's wheezy breath above him and caught a glimpse of his back in the curve. The old spy was showing a surprising turn of speed for a man of his age.

‘Stop!'

In his confusion and anger the German words weren't coming to him. Sam was furious with himself for letting the rogue get the better of him.

Up on the ground floor level, Hoffmann ran full
pelt for the exit. He shouted something to the security guard in his hutch by the door and pointed back towards Sam.

‘Fuck . . .'

The blob of officialdom emerged from his cubby-hole, arms outstretched. Sam swerved to avoid the man but his bulk blocked the doorway.

Sam's tongue seemed to swell in his mouth as he sought the words which would make the man understand. But before he could form them, huge arms folded round him like a clam shell, enveloping him in an odour of armpits and stale smoke.

‘Na, ja . . .' the guard grunted, turning him round like a pot on a wheel and pinning his arms behind him. He gabbled on in a Viennese accent that Sam found incomprehensible.

‘Sie verstehen nicht,' Sam croaked. ‘Er ist Mörder! Sie müssen ihn . . .'

‘Ja, ja ja . . .' the guard clattered. Sam made out the word ‘Polizei'.

He was manhandled into the security office. The man's strength was phenomenal. Other staff had gathered, alerted by the sound of the commotion. The blood and the fact that he was a foreigner fuelled their hostility.

He was slammed onto a chair and held there by the guard while a woman in glasses dialled a number. He heard the word ‘Polizei' again.

Then suddenly they were there. Not in response to the call, but because Patrick de Vere Collins had promised to tip off Austrian security about Sam going after Hoffmann. Two uniformed officers came running in through the entrance doors, closely followed by the Inspektor who'd been in charge of the Kovalenko murder case.

‘Herr Packer . . . You seem to be in some difficulties.'

‘Inspektor Pfeiffer, that's an epic understatement,' Sam coughed as the library guard reluctantly released his grip. ‘Did you get Hoffmann?'

‘I do not know how he looks,' the Inspektor answered, frowning. ‘Explain to me please.'

‘I will. Outside. Follow me quickly.' He pushed through the doors into Heldenplatz, the police close behind him.

There was no sign of Hoffmann. Sam checked with his embassy driver.

‘See anybody come running from the library?'

The man shook his head. ‘Wasn't looking,' he mumbled. Illegally parked, his anxiety at the arrival of the police was tangible.

Sam clicked his tongue with annoyance. The nosebleed was stopping. He quickly filled Pfeiffer in.

‘The computer, it still have the Internet connection?' the Austrian asked, grasping the situation immediately.

‘It did a few minutes ago.'

They ran back inside and down to the communications centre. The grey-suited official was hovering by the PC that Hoffmann had been using.

The Inspektor ordered him not to touch it. The official protested that the time paid for had run out. Sam pulled a 50-schilling note from his wallet and thrust it into the bureaucrat's hand.

They sat at the screen. The message Hoffmann had been writing was still blocked off but hadn't been erased. The words were in English to someone with the moniker ‘Gustaf Adolf'. Praise for a firebomb attack last night. Sam assumed it was Stockholm. Then a warning. The Lucifer Network cell in England had been closed down by ZOG activity. It was time to lie low for a while.

‘It is better we don't touch this,' the Inspektor
breathed. ‘I will send for computer specialists to examine everything.'

‘We must find out where Hoffmann's gone,' Sam insisted. ‘The answer may be here.'

He clicked the mouse on the mail ‘folders' and opened up ‘sent messages'. One e-mail there. In German this time. Sam and the Inspektor read it together.

It warned the recipients that the opposition was making progress against them and it begged them not to fail. It talked of the twelve months of preparation they'd already put in. And it described the next attack as the most important of their whole campaign.

The Inspektor pointed at the screen. ‘He use the word
Heimat.
'

‘Homeland. So the smallpox attack is to be in Germany,' Sam deduced.

‘But
Heimat
can mean a place more particular. His own home. His own part of the country. You know where that is?'

‘He lived in Berlin for most of his life,' Sam told him. ‘But . . .' Suddenly he stood up. ‘I've just thought of something.'