The Hidden Target (4 page)

“You always do, Erik,” she said very quietly. She drew an envelope from her pocket. “Here’s a ticket for the concert at Wigmore Hall tonight. I was supposed to be going there—with O’Connell and Westerman. I’ll let them know I can’t manage it, that I’m turning in the ticket at the box office. It won’t be a good seat—students’ rates—but you’ll be sitting beside them. And then it’s up to you. By the way, if you want to attend that lecture on the English novel, it’s tomorrow morning. University College. Eleven o’clock.” She was eyeing the traffic ahead of them. “I’ll drop you near Fortnum & Mason’s—that’s close enough to Regent Street,” she decided. She selected a vacant slot near the kerb and drew up. He was as quick as she was: he had the door open as he reached for his bag. “If you need help,” she said, “you know the telephone service that will take your message. I check with them each morning. But where can I reach you?”

“At that number. Same procedure. And thanks, Greta. Many thanks.”

A nod for goodbye and she was driving off. He went searching for a taxi, resisted hailing one that was just passing. Greta might have seen him enter it, and followed out of sheer curiosity. She had plenty of that. Which made her a damned good undercover agent. Certainly she had done a superlative job on O’Connell and Westerman.

Five minutes of loitering and he found a taxi, directed it to a small hotel off Russell Square. It had been carefully chosen: the Women’s Residence was nearby; University College, in Gower Street, was not much further away. As for this evening, with the concert ticket in his pocket and English pounds in his wallet, he was equally well prepared. Wigmore Street was easily reached. No problem at all. But what would he have to sit through in Wigmore Hall? He had no interest in music whatsoever. Just grin and bear it, he told himself, and opened the
International Herald Tribune
at page three.

It contained a news item from Essen, headed
CAPTURE OF FOUR TERRORISTS
. Two men arrested in an apartment on Friederikenstrasse; two women taken into custody on their return to the building. Arms and sophisticated radio equipment discovered, along with maps and documents. One of the women, known only as “Amalie,” had collapsed with severe chest pains and was taken to the prison hospital. The real names of all four terrorists were yet uncertain, but Berlin police were hopeful of identifying them. They were thought to belong to a terrorist organisation known as the People’s Revolutionary Force for Direct Action, which had been responsible for at least four major bomb explosions (five dead, thirty-seven injured) and three assassinations in the last two years. Their activities had centred around West Berlin and Frankfurt. Their main objective in the Essen area seemed to be the storage tanks in Duisburg. Thanks to the vigilance of the police... “Et cetera, et cetera,” said James Kiley. So Amalie had chosen a hospital room for her means of escape. All very neatly arranged.

But not so neatly, he discovered as he saw a small paragraph, a later report. Amalie’s body had been found in her heavily guarded hospital room. Death seemed from natural causes.

Seemed...
Theo’s ways and means were highly efficient. And just as Kiley was relaxing, scanning the rest of the page, he found a stop-press item. Three more Essen terrorists belonging to Direct Action, residing at Töpferstrasse, had been identified in Duisburg. Arrests were imminent.

Fools, thought Kiley, making their way to join Section Two in Duisburg, endangering its members and sympathisers. What was Theo’s idea? Keep the police concentrating on that area? Keep them from tracing Marco to Hamburg, or me to Rotterdam? It could be. He could find no mention of either Marco or Erik—and Amalie had known these two names. No mention at all. Somehow, that worried him.

He was in a grim mood when the taxi deposited him at the sedate entrance to the Russell Arms. Carefully, he counted out the strange money—but he would soon get used to Britain’s present system, changed from the £.s.d. he had once known— and calculated a ten per cent tip. The driver gave him a hard look, refrained from saying what he thought, but his face spoke adequately. Kiley added three more pence, coldly received, but he couldn’t stand here adding coins to an outstretched palm like some yokel from a hick town. He strode into the hotel, grim mood replaced by annoyance. In Rotterdam he had studied guide-books, maps, but not one item on tipping. Small things can trip you up, he warned himself; that cabbie is going to remember your face and where you are staying. And then, as he looked at the panelled lobby and saw the mixture of ordinary tourists and small business-men, annoyance with his own stupidity changed to a strange uncertainty.

It was a long time since he had walked into a reputable hotel and openly claimed his reservation; or crossed a lobby without pausing behind that large flower vase, for instance, just to note if anyone seemed interested. A long long time since he had shared a lift to his floor without getting out at the one above and walking down to his room by the back stairs; or entered a room such as this, where he’d come and go for two weeks (three weeks, if things moved slowly), curtains wide open and only to be closed when the lights were turned on, a window at the front of the hotel and not facing a blank wall in a back alley. Yes, it had been years since he had lived as an ordinary civilian. He had forgotten how this kind of life felt. Disturbing, somehow.

He tipped the boy who had insisted on carrying his bag and opening the room door, on showing him closet space and bathroom and the bedside radio. This time he must have calculated correctly, perhaps even too generously. But that was more in keeping with his American clothes and voice. The boy left, a happy grin added to his thanks, blissfully unaware of Kiley’s opinion of him: a human being debased by gratuities, living on perpetual handouts; a typical example of the serfdom that capitalism had imposed. When the people had established a true social order, there would be no need for tips that lowered the worth of a man, turned him into a leech sucking other men’s blood.

Kiley looked around his room, at an untapped telephone, at walls that hid no microphones or concealed cameras. Pure luxury, he thought, and began unpacking his bag: three weeks ahead of him, three weeks of leading the ordinary life of an ordinary man. For a moment, he felt a surge of elation. And then crushed it down, replaced it with a touch of guilt for that brief, inexplicable betrayal. The ordinary man, he reminded himself, was enslaved by a system that was long overdue for destruction.

As he stripped and showered in bourgeois comfort, he was quoting Anarchist Bakunin to a steam-fogged mirror: “There will be a qualitative transformation, a new living life-giving revelation, a new heaven and a new earth, a young and mighty world in which all our present dissonances will be resolved into a harmonious whole.” Yes, you had to destroy to build. Bakunin had said that, too: “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.”

If he felt any exhilaration now, as he dressed and left for the concert, it was only from the challenge ahead of him. No time for dinner, but that was of little account—the assignment was all that mattered. I’ll begin carefully, he decided, take things slowly, coolly. Yes, that was the angle needed for a first encounter.

The encounter went as planned. Except for the first five minutes after Kiley had arrived at Wigmore Hall. In the lobby, like most, of the crowd who had gathered there, he walked slowly around, putting in time before he went searching for his seat. His eyes, travelling over the small groups, the couples with pink and glassy faces, the standers and the strollers, were in quest of two blonde girls. They’d be easy to find—look-alikes who probably thought it amusing to carry the effect still further by matching clothes. He couldn’t see them, had a sharp attack of worry over a no-show possibility, tried to reassure himself: either they were already seated in the concert hall or they were late.

There were a few blondes, mostly faded, but all attached to intellectual types with long grey hair and glasses. Was this what Bach did to you? (He was well out of luck in the music tonight: a chamber concert, of all damn things; not one trumpet or drum to keep him awake.) There was a drift of people, a thinning of the crowd near the staircase. Standing to one side of it, keeping out of the traffic’s way, was a solitary blonde, not at all flustered by waiting alone. Her light-gold hair was shoulder length, brushed smooth, falling free. Medium height. Excellent figure. That he could see from this distance, and a perfect profile. He continued his stroll, passed in front of her.

She turned her head to look at him, observed his glance. Their eyes met. And held. Dazzling blue eyes, brilliant against the honey tan of her skin, edged by curves of dark lashes. Involuntarily he caught his breath, his pace slowed, hesitated, almost halted. Then he came to his senses and walked on. He was still stunned by that moment when everything had seemed to stop, a strange weird moment that now angered him. What the hell had come over him?

It was then he saw the second girl with shoulder-length fair hair, hurrying from the cloakroom, busy fumbling with the low shoulder line of her blouse. “It would happen, wouldn’t it?” she was asking as she joined her blue-eyed friend. “These darned shoulder straps...” He halted this time, watched them ascend the stairs, deep in talk. He didn’t need the sound of their American voices to know who they were. He followed slowly.

His seat was on the aisle. He slipped into it, paying the two girls little attention. Nina O’Connell was next to him. He read the programme, then kept his eyes directly ahead. She was sitting as still as he was, each sensing the nearness of the other, each ignoring it. He was actually grateful when the music began.

At the intermission, he let the girls out first, as if he were undecided whether to stay or to leave. His foot edged out just enough as Madge Westerman passed him so that her heel came down on his toe.

“Oh, I’m sorry! Please—”

“That’s okay,” he told her. “I’ll live.” Brown eyes looked contrite as he gave a reassuring smile. Enough for now, he told himself, and waited until they were well ahead of him before he followed. He didn’t join them in the foyer, just studied the crowd in his role as tourist, looking (he hoped) both remote and lonely. He succeeded.

“Don’t you think we should take pity on him?” Madge Westerman asked.

“Why should we?”

“Well—he’s an American, and alone in London.”

“So are a hundred other men.”

“I must have hurt him. My heel came down—”

“Not your night, it seems.”

“I ought to make a proper apology.” I really don’t go around tramping on other people’s feet, Madge thought.

“Don’t worry. He will be over any time now to collect it. I know that type.” Handsome and self-contained, although I did shake him for one brief moment, Nina decided. And I was shaken, too, she admitted. It was that look he gave me, the same look when I first met—Oh, ridiculous, stupid. Geneva was six years ago—how do you remember the way a man looked at you six years ago?

“Something wrong, Nina?”

“Nothing.”

Annoyed about nothing? Madge wondered. “All right, I’ll omit the apology and leave him alone and loitering.”

“I’m just tired of strange men trying to pick us up.”

“But he didn’t—”

“He has looked twice this way.” Nina began to study her programme notes. A tantalising man. Should she cut him or talk with him?

Madge said with a laugh, “Forget it. He has no designs on us. He’s leaving.”

Nina, to her credit, said, “I guess I was wrong. Oh, well... Is the intermission over? But let’s move in slowly. I’ll step on his foot this time.” If he can lip-read, she thought, I’ll be really embarrassed sitting beside him.

She needn’t have worried. When they arrived at their seats, his was vacant. “What discouraged him? The music or us?” And now they were both laughing.

***

Satisfactory, James Kiley was thinking as he left Wigmore Hall: one small, ludicrous move—a high heel coming smartly down on his foot—and the scene was set for tomorrow. They wouldn’t forget him, these two. Just as well to teach Miss O’Connell that a man could gawk at her like an idiot when she caught him for a split second off balance, but that didn’t mean she had made another little conquest. She had had too many, too easily. As for Madge Westerman—less sure of herself, a simpler character. She would be no problem.

***

No problem at all. Next morning, at eleven o’clock, he was seated at the back of a sombre lecture hall with rows of dutiful heads in front of him. Madge Westerman was among them. She hadn’t noticed him, too busy with frantic note-taking. Conscientious type, worried about failure in the coming exams. Inclined to be a loser, just as O’Connell clearly considered herself a winner. Attraction of opposites?

The lecture ended five minutes short of noon. So much useless knowledge, he thought, a meaningless parade of names who had never made any impact on the world except as producers of imaginary plots and characters. Reality would have scared them witless. Slowly, he made his exit in a stream of a hundred or more students, some young, some ageing, with few thoughts now in their heads but a midday meal. I could have given them a lecture, he thought, that would have softened their spines, sent them into the streets without those grins on their faces. He watched Westerman’s blonde hair, and marked time until she was near the door. He was there just as she reached it and stared at her in surprise. Would she, or wouldn’t she? But of course she did.

“Hi!” she exclaimed, brown eyes staring back at him.

“And hi to you!” He looked equally astonished, and then grinned. “How was the rest of the concert?”

“You were wise to miss it. They substituted a—” They were bumped aside by someone trying to meet someone else. He steadied her, caught the slipping books that had been cradled in her arm.

“Let me carry these until we get rid of this mob scene.”

She laughed then. Really a very pretty girl, he decided, if not quite as spectacular as her blue-eyed friend. “No one has carried my books since school.”