Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘Tomorrow, first thing. I used the formal approach and made an appointment. I figured it would be best to start out civilized.’

‘Philpott wants you to check something else while you’re there.’

Whitlock explained what they had learned about Juli Zwanzig from Erika Stramm’s computer file, and how Philpott had strong doubts about Wolff’s legitimacy as a candidate for assassination. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of some way to broach it.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Erika Stramm. Is she pliant?’

‘Um… The short answer is no.’

‘We need to know who the JZ executioner is. Stramm is the one to tell us.’

‘She’d never tell me. She wouldn’t even admit she knows what JZ is. She also claimed she and Emily Selby were just friends.’

‘There’s no chance she would relent and talk to you?’

‘If I got close enough to put a question to her, my suspicion is she’d put me in traction before I got my mouth open.’

‘I’ll drop that one back in Philpott’s lap.’

‘Good. Now I think I’ll hang up, C.W. Suddenly I’m getting sleepy.’

‘Don’t you want to know what Sabrina found out about the Arab shooter?’

‘Another time. If I miss my sleep on this cycle, I may have to wait twelve hours before I’m ready again.’

Sabrina was in the pale blue kitchen of her apartment on East 93rd Street, standing at the big butcher’s-block counter that divided the room. She had made coffee and was pouring it into a dark green porcelain cup.

‘This sensation is not loneliness,’ she told herself firmly, ‘I’m just out of time-whack.’

She had been feeling like this since she got back from Morocco. The expected pleasure of returning to her own home had not crystallized. She had the distinct feeling, at that very moment, that all of life was happening elsewhere, and she had somehow landed in a pocket of limbo.

She took her coffee to the couch and sat down. She picked up the TV remote and switched on the set. As soon as the picture appeared she began clicking. Women, she had read, were not so prone to channel-hopping as men. Sabrina could hop with the best of them.

None of the images that flashed past appealed strongly enough to make her want to stop and watch. She switched off the set and sat back, inhaling the aroma of the coffee, staring at the dark night sky beyond her windows.

She tried to imagine how different her life would be if she had gone into teaching. She had wanted to teach, once, but opportunity was a powerful side-tracker. After some postgraduate time at the Sorbonne she travelled in Europe for a couple of years, and on her return to the USA she was recruited by the FBI. That had something to do with her father: George Carver was a man with a lifelong career in politics (‘… in the machinery of political life,’ was how he described his work) who had perhaps wanted a son. Sabrina took the job because it smacked of adventure, something she felt her life might need now she had decided to come home. While she was at the FBI she discovered she had a talent with firearms. She also learned she was good at martial arts. Gradually the thoughts of a life in teaching were submerged. By the time she was gently head-hunted and won over by UNACO, Sabrina was decidedly a woman of action, with a robust, well-preserved spare-time passion for languages and European literature. Now, the thought of tenure at a small, picturesque campus seemed very attractive.

She drained her cup and took it back to the kitchen. She washed up, put out the lights and went to the bedroom. Now that she faced it, she felt desperately tired. Her shoulders ached and her legs still felt sluggish, a hangover from the time she spent cramped and dehydrated in the stinking room in Morocco. Sleep and rest for her poor muscles, she thought, would put a whole new shine on her outlook.

She sat on the side of the bed and smiled at the picture of her mother and father on the night table. George and Jeanne Carver lived in Florida now, she hardly ever saw them since George retired. Occasionally they would come and stay for a few days, so Jeanne could have an opportunity to see the shows and George could mingle with his old friends for a while. But they didn’t come often enough, and when they did they always believed they were intruding on her life.

‘If only you would,’ she told the picture.

What she felt now was a familiar sensation she privately called her amputee state: not belonging with anyone and not wanting to belong, but feeling cut off nevertheless. Or it was simpler than that: she was merely sorry for herself.

‘Self-pity is a crime against your person,’ she said firmly, and stood up. ‘Snap out of it.’

All the same, she found it hard not to feel melancholy as she got undressed and put on her nightdress. Emotionally, she made a habit of keeping the wick turned low. Early in her career at the FBI she had had an affair with a sub-controller who turned ugly when she showed signs of falling in love with him. In the end he set his wife on her. Nowadays, beyond superficial friendship, she was wary of men, and she made a point of avoiding the ones who were not entirely free from other attachments – which was difficult to do, because they always said they were.

The telephone rang. She picked it up.

‘Sabrina,’ Whitlock said. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘Nice try, C.W., but no. You should have waited another twenty minutes.’

‘You know I wouldn’t call at this hour unless it was important.’ Sabrina’s other line started ringing, then the fax machine cut in. ‘I can hear that,’ Whitlock said. ‘It’s from me. A summary of what Mike found out when he visited Erika Stramm’s apartment. Read and digest.’

‘Why am I getting all this attention so late at night?’

‘Because there’s a problem. It needs handling and Philpott thinks you’re the very person to do the job.’

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘Erika’s response to Mike’s break-in was hostile.’

‘No kidding. Are you saying she caught him?’

‘Apparently. Anyway, Mike did manage to purloin a computer file with the stuff I’ve just faxed to you, but there’s a crucial gap in the information.’

‘And crucial gaps are my specialty.’

‘We don’t know who the killer is, the executioner, the one who’s behind two murders that we know of. As things stand between Mike and Erika Stramm, there’s not a chance she’ll tell him anything.’

‘But you believe she’ll tell me?’

‘Well the chief thinks so.’ Whitlock paused. ‘And yes, I think so, too. I’ve always admired your, how shall I put it, delicate powers of persuasion.’

Sabrina took a moment to consider what he had said, then asked simply, ‘When do I get the travel details?’

‘You have them already. They’re at the end of the fax. Keep in touch. And be careful.’

‘Sure. You too.’

Sabrina put down the phone. She smiled again at the picture of her parents. It was odd the way events worked on her moods. She had just been told she had to get out there and risk her neck again. Because of that, she no longer felt cut off from anything.

Russ Grundy, stout and ruddy-featured, was squeezed into a corner in the back of a big white van with BENTINCK’S WINDSHIELD REPLACEMENTS painted in blue on the side. It was parked in the street behind the offices of the Transit Authority building in downtown Fort Worth, next to the bus station.

‘It’s busy along here, which is good cover, and the traffic doesn’t affect the equipment,’ Russ told C.W. Whitlock. ‘I’m within a mile of Chadwick’s house, which is perfect, and if I need to move closer for any reason nobody is going to notice or care.’