Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘There you are, then!’ Leder said, fluttering his napkin. ‘Look at the difference in us.’

‘I was about to say, Herr Leder, that I observed no apparent age difference at all.’

The truth was that Stefan Fliegel could have been mistaken for Peter Leder’s son. Leder looked twenty years older than his age, while Fliegel, who spent a portion of every year bronzing himself at the Italian lakes, looked like a man of fifty. Fliegel was also good-looking and moderately athletic in his build. Leder was stooped and pot-bellied; he had blotchy skin, his face was deeply lined, and his teeth were discoloured by years of drinking iron tonic.

‘Ahem.’ Leder dabbed his mouth with his napkin, heralding a change of subject. ‘I see no need to delay telling you this any further – I have decided that your application for funding should be approved.’

‘Oh…’ Fliegel sat back, mouth slightly open.

‘The fact that I asked you to dinner was no indication of my approval, as I warned you when I issued the invitation.’

‘I understand that, Herr Leder,’ Fliegel beamed.

‘I have frequently entertained men to dinner on occasions when I have had to decline their applications. I simply feel that the dinner table is an excellent place to conclude an item of business, one way or the other.’

‘I’m very grateful you’ve seen fit to help our foundation, sir.’

‘Well now, any properly-run organization aimed at improving the quality of life and outlook for disadvantaged young Germans is bound to have the support of myself and my directors.’

‘It is through the foresight and generosity of people such as yourself that we are able to carry on our work.’

Fliegel was proud of the way he could match Leder’s stuffy manner of speech. He also sat forward when Leder sat forward, and folded his hands when Leder did. Mirroring, he had learned, was a way to lower the other fellow’s guard.

‘Your record of accomplishment is most impressive,’ Leder said. ‘I was interested to note you contribute a sizeable proportion of your time as well as a percentage of your income to the work.’

‘Indeed.’ Fliegel nodded, lowering his eyes with rehearsed modesty. ‘There is a large measure of vocation in what we do. I would feel my week had been wasted if I didn’t contribute at least ten hours to the work of the foundation.’

The waiter had been hovering. Now he came forward as Fliegel sat back and reached for his wine glass. It was not the same waiter as before. This one was taller. He had a face with the serene gravity of a graveyard angel’s, Fliegel thought, and he was attractively lean and wiry. This was the kind of young man who could break Fliegel’s heart, given half a chance. Fliegel smiled at him.

‘Did you enjoy the meal, sir?’

Fliegel nodded. The waiter watched as he drank a little wine and put down the glass.

‘Will there be anything else?’

‘Well…’

Fliegel would have liked a cognac. But for the moment he was confused, diverted. For one thing, Leder was obviously offended that the waiter was ignoring him; for another, the head waiter was standing in the middle of the restaurant staring at them, frowning as if something was wrong. Fliegel was aware, too, that this waiter didn’t quite have the aura for the job. In fact, he was distinctly unwaiterly in his lack of deference, and in the bold way he stared.

‘Nothing more then, sir?’ The blue eyes were fixed on Fliegel’s, disturbing him. ‘Perhaps it’s time to make final settlement,’ the waiter said.

That jarred Fliegel. ‘I’m sorry?’

The head waiter was approaching, weaving carefully between the tables. The waiter looked over his shoulder, saw the man and nodded, smiling.

‘Oberkellner,’ he muttered, nodding again.

The head waiter glared at him. He kept coming, bumping a woman’s shoulder and stopping to apologize.

‘Yes, the settlement, I think,’ the waiter said, looking at Fliegel again.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

The waiter reached inside his jacket and brought out a pistol. To Fliegel the world suddenly became unreal. This was not happening. It was a recollection, or he imagined it, or…

He heard his pulse thump in his ears and felt himself rise out of the chair as the waiter pointed the gun at his face. Fliegel had an intuition of magnetism, of somehow compelling the barrel of the gun to follow his movements. He felt his foot catch on the chair leg and grasped the table to keep his balance.

‘Settlement for Nathan Barash,’ the waiter said.

Fliegel heard the gun make a tiny metallic sound, then there was a rushing redness and noise like hollow boxes falling, then there was nothing.

A man two tables away had been combing his fingers through his hair when the gun went off. Now, bewildered by the noise and the screaming of women, the man looked at his hand where something had landed, warm and wet. He stared, uncomprehending, at the lumpy emulsion of blood and brain sticking to his fingertips.

‘Stop that man!’ the head waiter yelled.

Peter Leder stared at the body of Stefan Fliegel, sprawled back in the chair, one eye and half his forehead gone. The noise of the shot still rang in Leder’s ears, but he heard glass breaking and looked up. The waiter, still brandishing the pistol, had jumped clean through the restaurant window. He was running across the lanes of traffic, away from the restaurant, into the dark.

Mike spent the morning in the UNACO technical library scanning the records of keys and locks. After two hours of blind alleys he turned to Security Overviews, a classified listing of 10,000 key-and-lock combinations in use by American banks and security institutions. The entry he wanted was on the third from last page:

Lock series BL 921773 to BL 921872:

Sanders Lowe Inc. for Luckham Depositories

One hundred keys and locks of the same series, probably all in the same place. Emily Selby’s key was number BL 921786. It was a one-off no-copy device, high tungsten, with advanced precision in the cutting and grooving. It was a key which must have cost as much as a good strong-box. Mike decided it would be best to look for the matching lock at one of Luckham’s top three security operations.

To track down the lock he had to go to the communications suite, fire up a computer and enter a code word. His word was licet, Latin for ‘it is allowed’. After a second a menu appeared on screen. He clicked the box next to the entry CSC.

A number of facilities at UNACO took no account of the law. The CSC – Company Scrutiny Corpus – was one of them. It was a substantial collection of data that violated several important laws and business regulations covering privacy and the rights of groups and individuals. In addition, the greater part of the information had been obtained by illegal means.

But CSC was a priceless tool. The search for the lock to accommodate Emily Selby’s key could have taken days, and would have cost hundreds of dollars in bribes; using CSC, Mike completed the search in eight minutes.

He began by calling up a full list of depositories owned by Luckham, then began the search with the most secure depository. He found a listing of all lock numbers on the boxes, even a recently updated list of depositors. The lock numbers were not of the BL series so he moved to the next depository down the list, 400 dollars a month cheaper than the one above, and there he found the entry he wanted:

Sanders Lowe Lock numbers BL 921773 to BL 921872, fitted in Coverley Titanic-grade fire-resistant deed boxes, fossil-cell filled cavity, 5 millimetre sheet steel, cold bent. Boxes in rows of ten, ten rows high, protected out of hours by 8 laseroptic alarms.