Prime Target (11 page)

‘What we need from you, Mr Lewis, is a bank's guarantee that you are good for the seven-hundred dollars monthly rental. We also need three good business references, and your permission to check that you have no criminal record or criminal affiliations - you appreciate this last is a formality which is insisted upon by our insurers.'

‘Well, fine, but there's a snag in there,' Mike said, and he saw Conway's eyes harden a fraction. ‘I need your protection now, I mean right now, this very day. Early this evening I have to fly to Asia on business, and I must know these -' he patted the briefcase, ‘are completely safe in my absence.'

Conway cleared his throat delicately. ‘It would take exceptional measures to secure a box for you today, sir.'

‘But is it possible?'

‘I can't say I would hold out much hope.'

‘Can I short-circuit this?' Mike said. ‘I believe you have a regularly adjusted and updated record of safe bets, isn't that so? A confidential list, two hundred men and women in commerce who can be trusted no matter what. Am I right?'

This was shaky. Depending on how Conway stood on confidentiality, he might deny the existence of the list.

‘Well, now.' Conway cleared his throat again. ‘The list you refer to is intended to be a record of guarantors and referees whose opinion of others we would accept without question. Are you saying that you wish to cite someone on the list as a character referee?'

‘Yes, I do. But I also want to point out that I'm on the list myself. Or so I believe.'

‘Frankly, Mr Lewis, I don't see how you could know such a thing.'

‘Please accept that no one deliberately told me,' Mike said. ‘In business, at the level of sensitivity where I operate, important secrets occasionally become transparent by sheer accident.'

Conway got to his feet. ‘If you will excuse me for a few minutes, Mr Lewis…' He turned to go, then turned back. ‘Could you give me the name of the other person, the one you wish to cite as referee?'

‘Kenneth Ross.'

Conway noted the name and went away. Mike waited, imagining what was happening. Conway would go to a secure computer. He would open the special database of 200 names, initiate a search, and lo, under the name of Brett Lewis, there would be a picture of Mike. Attached to it would be a glittering business pedigree; appropriate electronic signatures would appear on a
short status profile declaring him to be a man of solid-gold probity.

The search of Kenneth Ross's name would bring up a picture of Alan Flint, a character actor whose talent for faces was in regular demand at UNACO. The fictitious Ross, like Lewis, would have a shining business lineage, hybridized from several genuine histories. The work had still been underway as Mike left the UN Secretariat building.

When Mr Conway called the number on the secret file to check Brett Lewis's credentials - a formality, but Mike would bet he'd do it anyway - the Kenneth Ross who would come on the line would be C.W. Whitlock himself, ready and able to spin a line that would charm the keys off a jailer.

Conway was back in five minutes. His respectful manner now had a much clearer streak of deference.

‘Mr Lewis,' he breathed, ‘I'm sorry to have kept you. I am happy to tell you that Luckham would be glad to offer you whatever facilities they can, whenever you need them.'

Ten minutes later Mike was alone in a small humidified vault with the ten-by-ten battery of deed boxes. He had been rented number 8, after scribbling his signature on a commitment to rent it for a minimum period of one month. His privacy in the chamber, Conway had assured him, was total. Mike believed that.

As soon as the door was shut he took a pen torch from his pocket and walked along the rows of boxes,
shining the torch obliquely on each escutcheon plate, making the engraved numbers stand out.

Emily Selby's number was on box 29. He slid the box from its nest, put it on the table and unlocked it. He raised the lid slowly, as if something was coiled in there, ready to jump.

He had come with no preconception, but there was less in the box than he had expected. Furthermore, it looked like the kind of stuff that would be found in a shoebox on the top shelf of a closet, not in a high-security deed box. There were old holiday snapshots of Emily and her husband, an early picture of her father and mother with their names engraved on the gilt frame, several small books of children's stories with the name Emily Lustig written in a childish hand on the flyleaf of each; there were birth and marriage documents, one or two defunct insurance policies, and a sealed white envelope. Mike opened it.

Inside was a photograph of ten people, men and women, sitting in two solemn-faced rows, stiff-backed, under a banner embroidered with the initials
JZ,
and underneath the initials the legend
Gründed 1994.
The only other item in the envelope was a cheap notebook with one scribbled entry:
17a Scharweber Strasse, Berlin.

Mike removed most of the articles, apart from the framed picture and the children's books, and put them in his briefcase. The notebook and the group photograph he put in his inside jacket pocket. There was nothing like being thorough,
but he knew the only significant items were the picture and the address in the notebook.

He locked Emily's box and slid it back into its nest. He took down his own box, opened it, and put in a bundle of newspapers. He had brought the papers for padding, so the briefcase would look the same going out as it did coming in - not that anyone here would suspect a man like Brett Lewis of doing anything underhanded.

As he left the depository Mr Conway appeared from behind his glass panel and walked with him to the elevator.

‘I hope we continue to be of service to you, Mr Lewis.'

Mike smiled and nodded.

‘I think I can safely say,' Conway beamed, ‘your property could not be safer anywhere.'

‘Thanks for your help,' Mike said as the doors opened. ‘Good day, Mr Conway.'

As the elevator plummeted, he reflected that one place safer than Luckham's he could think of, straight away, was his locker back at UNACO. Nobody, so far as he knew, would ever dare open it without authorization, and the contents, if trivial, were still completely private.

Philpott had left messages for Sabrina, Mike and C.W. to gather for a meeting at three o'clock. By 2.55 they were all in the UNACO briefing room. C.W. and Mike sat opposite each other. Again Sabrina had taken the seat adjacent to Philpott's, but this time on the opposite side of the table. Philpott leaned by the window, leafing through computer printouts. As Sabrina sat down he looked at the clock.

‘So let's begin.' He came and sat at the table. ‘This case is taking on an air of urgency, of which more in a few minutes. First we'll update. Sabrina, tell us what you've gleaned on Emily Selby.'

Sabrina summarized what she had learned from talking to Emily's three former colleagues, especially Dilys Craig.

‘The death on July 20th, 1993, of Emily's husband and her father, who were her only family, affected her severely. She had cause to believe that the two men died in suspicious circumstances.'

Sabrina read an extract of the autopsy report, which indicated both men had suffered trauma not usually associated with drowning cases.

‘Moving on from that matter for the moment,' Sabrina said, ‘I can now tell you I've found a connection between Emily Selby and Erika Stramm.'

She explained how the women were related, and added that in recent times they appeared to have been in regular correspondence.

‘What's known about Emily's husband?' Philpott said.

‘I dug through the press files and professional directories for information on both men.' Sabrina took out another sheet. ‘Nothing exceptional on Desmond Selby. He was forty-three, an assistant professor of Eastern Studies at Cornell. He and Emily met in Baghdad when they went there on separate research projects. Selby was Jewish, but like his wife he had no known affiliations to Jewish organizations here or abroad. By all accounts, Desmond Selby was a fine academic and a model citizen. For what it's worth, Emily believed he was killed because he just happened to be where her father was at the time the executioner or executioners showed up.'

‘The old man?' Philpott said.

Sabrina found the notes. ‘He was born Johannes Georg Hofmannsthal Stramm,' she said, ‘born in 1923 in Munich, educated there and in Berlin. In 1941, when he was eighteen, he was ousted by the Nazis, along with several others, from the
college where he had been studying. He wasn't allowed to work and so he tried several times, unsuccessfully, to leave Germany. He was caught in a round-up of Jews in 1942 and was transported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. He changed identities with a dead inmate, Johannes Lustig, and by various means he managed to survive. When the camp was liberated he applied for permission to travel to the USA and was accepted. He eventually took American citizenship and distinguished himself as a scholar.

‘Johannes Lustig was a supporter of the Zionist cause and was present among the spectators when David Ben-Gurion announced the birth of the state of Israel in 1948. He had a doctorate in Hebraic Studies, another in pure philosophy, and he held a professorship of European History at Cornell; he wrote four books about the Russian pogroms and a number of pamphlets on the Holocaust.'

‘Was he any kind of agitator?'

‘I've no evidence of that,' Sabrina said. ‘He wrote angry letters to the press from time to time, and one or two of his pamphlets came down hard on what he saw as fascist tendencies in certain aspects of US domestic policy. But that was it.'

Notes were made.

‘Your turn, Mike,' Philpott said.

Mike gave them a summary of his break-in at the depository. ‘Emily placed high value on simple things,' he said. ‘The strong-box was full of items
with no commercial value. I have to say it was kind of touching.'

He passed copies of the notebook entry and the group photograph to Sabrina and C.W.

‘The address has been checked,' Philpott said. ‘It's in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, a racially tense area with a fair bit of crime and sundry inner-city unpleasantness. The address is a high-security apartment, one of those places with no windows, metal-clad doors, alarms and a couple of surveillance cameras. It's owned by Herschell and Grosz, a large firm of property renters and developers. They won't say who the tenant is.'

‘Any bets it's Erika Stramm?' Whitlock said.

‘Well, she has no listed home address,' Philpott said, ‘all we have is an e-mail location.'

More notes were taken, then Sabrina, Mike and C.W. sat back and looked at Philpott, who obviously had something important to say. Several times in the past few minutes he had centred his tie and shot his cuffs. It was a sign: substantial news was imminent.

‘These are details of two recent murders in Germany.' Philpott handed out information sheets. ‘Karl Sonnemann, sixty-three, a university professor, was killed in Frankfurt. Stefan Fliegel, sixty-two, a businessman, died in Berlin. The names of both these men appear on the list Sabrina found in Emily Selby's hotel room. So, whatever else that document might be, it's a hit-list, and the killings have begun.'

‘Do we have a line on the killer or killers?' Mike said.

‘In both cases the perpetrator was described as a young man, no older than twenty-five, approximately six feet two inches tall, fair hair, blue eyes…'

‘Finding him will be a cinch, then,' Mike said. ‘A guy like that will really stand out in Germany.'

‘He may not be a German,' Philpott said. ‘A witness who was with Professor Sonnemann said the young man spoke German with a peculiar accent. She couldn't be any more specific about it.'

‘What's being done to shield Andreas Wolff?' Whitlock said. ‘I presume you are making his safety a priority?'

‘He has been given an armed guard,' Philpott said, ‘and there is round-the-clock surveillance on his Tiergarten apartment.'

Sabrina asked if anything was being done to safeguard the others on the list.

‘Not at present,' Philpott said. ‘The decision not to alert them may be seen as callous, but for the present we are anxious to know what connects these men, and our efforts in that direction might be harmed if we approached them.'

Sabrina said no more on the point. She wasn't paid to argue.

‘We still have no depth in this picture,' Philpott said. ‘I want you to go to Morocco, Sabrina. Find out about the man who killed Emily Selby, get hold of everything there is to know. Chances are he
didn't act on his own initiative, so if he was put up to it we want to know who did the putting up.'

‘Are we sure Morocco's where he came from?' Sabrina said. ‘Most recently, I mean?'

‘Mossad local intelligence in Rabat have checked out his movements and they're sure he was resident in Tetuán. You'll have a briefing docket before you leave and details of the approximate area of habitation will be in there, with a map.'

‘Fine.'

Philpott turned to Mike. ‘I want you to get inside that secure apartment in Berlin and find out what Erika Stramm is up to.'

‘Shouldn't we maybe do this the other way around?' Mike said. ‘Me go to Morocco, Sabrina take Germany.'

‘Are you displaying chivalrous concern?' Philpott said.

‘Morocco
can
be very dicey,' Mike said. ‘I've some experience there and -'

‘Thanks for your concern, Mike, but I think I'll manage,' Sabrina said coldly.

‘My decision to assign Sabrina to Morocco,' Philpott said, ‘is based on the belief that, as a woman, she won't be perceived as a threat. More fools them, I might add. By not encountering as much resistance as a man would, she will potentially be the most efficient.'

Mike shrugged.