Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘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.