Prime Target (12 page)

‘Besides,' Philpott went on, ‘she won't be going
alone. Lucy Dow will be there, in position, ready to act as cover, diversion, or guide.'

‘Why the two of them?' Mike said.

‘Lucy is there anyway, keeping a weather eye on a
Sendero Luminoso
splinter group hiding out in the area. Lucy knows the territory and customs, she can help Sabrina find her way around. She may even come in handy for back-up.' Philpott paused. ‘Do you have a problem with that, Mike?'

‘None at all,' Mike snapped.

‘So.' Philpott turned to Sabrina. ‘You will present yourself at the Briefing Suite at 17.30 hours today and they will provide what you need. In Morocco I want you to travel light, look like a typical tourist.'

Philpott stood, picked up his papers and tamped them on the desk. ‘That's it. Time to disperse and perform good works. I'll be waiting for you to report back. Remember, the clock is now running. You must take all necessary steps to evaluate the problem, contain it and neutralize it.'

‘Easy for you to say,' Mike murmured as he walked away from the table.

He waited outside the briefing room for Sabrina.

‘Hey,' he said as she came out, ‘no hard feelings. I just thought the job in Berlin would be more your style, that's all.'

‘I'll take my chances with what I've been assigned,' Sabrina said. ‘The way I always do.'

‘I didn't think you wouldn't. I was trying to be helpful.'

‘There's no need. In fact, I'd take it kindly if you'd smother the impulse to help me any time it comes up.'

‘Why?' Sabrina started to walk away and Mike followed her. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because some offers of help affect me the same way that setbacks do.'

As she hurried away from him Mike noticed red spots had appeared on her cheeks. It was a sign she was angry. He often made that happen. It was, he decided, one of his more depressing talents.

Back in the briefing room Philpott talked to C.W. Whitlock about the two men who had died. In spite of extensive background searches by the German police, not a thread of a connection could be found between the victims.

‘All they appear to have in common is their killer, and the fact that they are both on the list.'

Philpott's years at Scotland Yard had ingrained an old cops' motto that a lack of evidence was usually the fault of the investigator - until it could be proved there was another cause.

‘Two men on a mystery list get mysteriously murdered. There's a link all right, and if we don't find it soon there'll be more dead Germans on our plate.'

‘More information is emerging,' Whitlock said. ‘The danger is that we may start seeing connections that don't mean anything, similarities that aren't connections at all. We now know that during the past fifteen years, nine of the men on the list
have taken holidays in South America. Eleven are known to have Swiss bank accounts. Then there's the fact that so many of them are orphans, and several of the others now appear to have been adopted. The gaps and inconsistencies in the German records system don't help, but I'll make the most of what we turn up. Rely on that.'

‘I already do,' Philpott said.

Whitlock knew he would be expected to see connections where others saw none. Philpott believed C.W. had a peculiarly analytical brain which suited him to that kind of task. Whitlock believed Philpott missed the point. He was not especially gifted in the analytical department, but he
was
extremely patient - to the extent that he would dwell on a problem for days if necessary, familiarizing himself with it, piece by minuscule piece until familiarity equalled transparency and it was solved. Patience was the secret of many kinds of success, but patience was one of the inborn tools people didn't use much any more. Which, Whitlock thought, was just too bad for people.

‘What's known about the victims?' he asked Philpott.

‘The usual bland stuff. Sonnemann, the professor, had a long, distinguished career as an academic. Only known weak point was for young women, which is almost grounds for canonization these days. The other one, Fliegel, was nearly as respectable, except his sexual enthusiasm was for males. Neither man was ever in trouble with the law. They lived
in different parts of Germany and there is no traceable reason to believe they knew each other, or had ever met.'

‘Will I be sent copies of the police reports?'

‘You should have them within the hour.'

‘As soon as I have the paperwork I'll get out the runes and the tarot pack and see what comes up.'

Philpott went off to a meeting to discuss the failing credibility of the International Court of Justice. Whitlock crossed the corridor to the UNACO Command Centre and looked into the office of the duty Newsline Monitor. No one was around. For a while he watched the bulletins flash up on the screens, then decided he should be a man and face at least one of his terrors.

He picked up a phone and dialled the number of his wife's mobile. Carmen answered at once.

‘It's me,' he said.

‘What is it?'

‘About last night, and the night before, for that matter…'

‘Sorry?'

‘When I tried to apologize, and you turned it into something else both times -'

‘I'm working, C.W. Is there any point to this call?'

He wondered if she was ever this way with colleagues. Carmen was a consultant paediatrician, established in a good private practice, and putting in a conscience-cleansing ten hours a week in the Emergency Room of a city hospital - ‘the kind
listed in blue pages, not yellow pages,' C.W. would point out to friends, proud of Carmen's work among poorer people.

‘Well?' she said. ‘What exactly do you want?'

‘To say I really am sorry, I suppose.'

‘Saying sorry doesn't cut it.'

‘So what do you want from me?'

‘What's the good of you doing anything if I've to tell you to do it first?'

Now he wondered if maybe she was this hard with patients too. Poor kids.

‘Carmen, make one thing clear.'

‘What?'

‘Are you going to let up on me before I'm too old to enjoy making up?'

‘Now you're being flippant.'

‘Yes, you're right,' he said, feeling his temper rise. ‘And what kind of woman does that make you, sharing your life with somebody as flippant and superficial as I am?'

He threw down the receiver.

‘Trouble?' a voice said behind him.

He turned and saw Caroline, the duty Line Monitor for the afternoon.

‘I have a habit of walking into knives,' C.W. told her. ‘Then I try to lay the blame for my carelessness on the knives themselves, if you follow me.'

‘Oh, sure,' Caroline put down her fresh cup of coffee. ‘It doesn't sound very original, as dumb streaks go.'

She swiped a smart card across a slot in the
drawer under the computer console. The drawer slid open. She took out a big brown envelope.

‘This came for you about ten minutes ago.'

C.W. took it. He pulled back the flap and looked inside. It was from the Berlin police, preliminary investigative reports on the murders of Karl Sonnemann and Stefan Fliegel.

‘Work,' he said, glad of the distraction.

‘Work is the only practical consolation for being born, someone great once said. Miguel de Unamuno, if I'm not mistaken,' said Caroline.

‘Thank you, Caroline, you do a lot to push back the boundaries of my ignorance.'

Whitlock stuck the envelope under his arm and left. As he walked along the passage he repeated the words in his head:
Work is the only practical consolation for being born.

There were times, times like now, when a line like that seemed perfectly apt.

As Sabrina stepped off the plane at Tangier she felt she was breathing steam. The sun blazed from a cloudless sky, but ten minutes earlier it had rained, and now great pools of water on the tarmac were evaporating, making the air heavy with moisture.

She had deliberately dressed down for the trip, wearing a brown check shirt, soft brown chinos and loafers. Her hair was tied back in a dark gold ribbon and she wore no make-up. Even so, she attracted the attention of a red-faced businessman who fell in behind her at immigration control. She felt his fingertips make light contact with her hip.

‘I don't know if you've been here before,' he said, ‘but these guys will try to use any excuse at all to make you submit to a body-search. They're apes, believe me. Just be careful how you answer their questions.'

The immigration officers looked perfectly civilized to Sabrina. The only ape-like creature in sight
was the one breathing on her, the whisky on his breath emphasized by the damp air. He had the bug-eyed, snaggle-toothed look, Sabrina thought, of the one and only child molester she had ever seen. On the other hand, the heat and the fact she had a slight headache could be tilting her judgement.

‘I'll watch it,' she told the man.

‘It's not that they want to humiliate you,' he went on, winking at her. ‘They don't make much money, so they go after any bonuses they can pick up, like handling an American woman.'

‘I hear what you say.'

‘Here on business, are you?' He was now standing beside her, even though the sign at the door emphasized they should stay in single file. ‘I don't get the impression you've come here searching for fun.'

‘It's business,' Sabrina said, not looking at him.

‘Harvey Bristow's my name.'

‘Fine.'

‘So who are you?'

Sabrina saw a vacant desk and the officer behind it beckoning to her. She strode across the tiled floor and handed over her passport, aware that Bristow was plodding after her.

‘Remember what I told you,' he muttered, too close to her ear.

The immigration officer smiled at Sabrina. He was tall and dapper and cool in his light cotton uniform. He opened her passport, looked hard at
her face, smiled again and stamped a blank page. He handed back the passport, still smiling.

Sabrina thanked him and legged it across the concourse, looking for the baggage carousel. Two things happened almost at once. She heard the pest running to catch up, and a familiar Japanese voice rang out from a Hertz desk to her right.

‘Kogatasha o karitai no desu ga.'

She turned and saw Nat Takahashi of the UN Economic and Social Council. He was a short, lean, very brisk man in his late thirties. In spite of the heat he was wearing a dark wool business suit and his customary white shirt and dark-blue tie. He looked pleased that the clerk at the desk understood Japanese.

‘Isshuukan karitai no desu ga…'

Sabrina's Japanese wasn't strong, but she believed he was saying he wanted to hire a small car for a week.

‘The carousels are over there,' Bristow said, panting with the effort to catch up to her. This time he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Come on, I'll give you a hand with your bags.'

‘Nat!' Sabrina called out.

Takahashi turned, frowning, looking for the source of the sound. He saw her and beamed.

‘Hey! Sabrina! You following me or what?'

She made eye signals, telegraphing displeasure at the sweaty presence with his hand on her shoulder.

‘Stay right there.' Nat had caught on. ‘I'll just finish this item of business.'

Bristow looked put out. ‘The guy is a friend of yours?'

‘He sure is.'

Together they watched Nat take back his credit card, his hire documents and a set of car keys. He put everything carefully in his pockets, then he turned and walked to where Sabrina stood. He was not smiling now. His face was impassive, the eyes fixed on Bristow.

‘Is this gentleman bothering you?'

‘Hey now, hang on.' Bristow let out a nervous chuckle. ‘I was just talking to the lady here…'

‘Take a hike.'

Bristow looked stunned. He swallowed. ‘There's no call to go taking that tone, now -'

‘You deaf, or what?' Nat's harsh New York delivery clashed with his oriental looks and conservative dress. Bristow could have been told that this was a Japanese gangster and he would have believed it. ‘This lady does not need your attentions, OK?'

‘Jesus, what did I do here?'

‘Just turn and go about your business,' Nat told him. ‘Otherwise you could be going back to base with your windpipe in your pocket.'

Bristow snatched up his hand baggage and stamped away, face redder than ever, his mouth churning. Sabrina looked at Nat wide-eyed.

‘I only wanted an excuse to shake him off.'

‘Well…' Nat shrugged. ‘If you're going to do a job, why not do it thoroughly?'

He took her arm and led the way to the carousel.

‘I know there's no sense asking you why you're here, Sabrina, because you'll only hand me a pack of lies, but you can tell me if this is your first time in Tangier.'

‘It is. But my destination's Tetuán.'

‘Good. I'm heading for a town called Martil, which lies a few miles beyond the place you're going. Let's get our bags, then I can give you a lift to your hotel.'

‘That's great.'

‘Don't be too sure. I love showing off my local knowledge, and even if you yawn a lot it won't stop me. By the time we get to Tetuán you might wish you'd stuck with the bleary guy.'

In a little red Peugeot with the windows wound down, Nat Takahashi drove through Tangier with the kind of reckless unconcern Sabrina had seen only once before, in Saigon, where they drove with what seemed to be a total dependence on Providence. Every few yards Nat would bang on the horn, making people scatter.

‘To civilized people forced to spend time in this part of the world,' he told Sabrina, ‘the horn is known as the Arab foot-brake. Once you get the hang of the technique, it has a certain charming logic.'