Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘There will be plenty of people who won’t believe a word of it,’ Mike said. ‘They’re the ones who take the trouble to dig down to the truth, which means they’re also likely to take the trouble to blow your head off.’

Wolff shrugged. He was obviously not convinced.

‘Anyway,’ Mike said, ‘the new threat is something different.’ He took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it. ‘You’ll see your own name on that list. Do you know any of the other men?’

Wolff took the list and frowned at it. ‘Him,’ he said, jabbing the paper with a long finger. ‘Rudolf Altenberg. I don’t know any of the others.’

‘How do you know Altenberg?’

‘Against my better judgement, and under pressure from my ex-wife who is a friend of Altenberg’s wife, I devised a computer system for him and I personally installed it in his home. A very sophisticated system, I might say. It’s better than anything I’ve got myself.’

‘Have you mingled socially with Altenberg?’

‘Now why do you ask that?’

‘To be blunt, the men on that list are Nazis.’

‘Except for me.’

‘Well…’

‘I’m not surprised Altenberg’s a Nazi. He’s a very unpleasant man with terrible taste in books and music. So why do you suppose I am on that list?’

‘Somebody thinks you’re a Nazi, I guess.’

‘And why is there a list at all?’

‘It’s a hit-list. Two people on it are already dead.’

‘That is gloomy news, Mr Graham.’ Wolff looked towards the window. ‘Somebody could really be after me, then.’

‘It wouldn’t be wise to doubt it. Tell me, why would anybody get the impression you’re a Nazi?’

‘Because of my association with Altenberg?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I would assume so,’ Wolff said. ‘We attended social gatherings together. He insisted on a couple of visits to functions, he wanted to introduce me to people he said were now beneficiaries of the computer system I had designed for him. He was really just showing me off, of course, because I’m rather famous. Tiresome, very tiresome.’

Mike wasn’t sure if he detected evasiveness. Wolff seemed to want to dismiss the topic and move on.

‘You can’t think of any other reason why somebody might think you’re a Nazi?’

Wolff’s eyes hardened. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just try to accept that.’ He looked away.

‘I think we should tighten your security, anyway,’ Mike said.

‘I don’t agree.’

‘It can’t hurt.’

‘What I have is adequate. I am hampered enough, I don’t want any more restraints.’

‘These guys are not adequate. They would be halfway out of their chairs and reaching for their guns at the point when a competent assassin would blow them away.’

‘Is that the threat I face? A trained killer?’

‘It seems so. We have a description and we’re trying to track him down, but until we do, you definitely need to be shielded better than you are. I know it means offending the local flatfoot tribe, but we can’t take feelings into account.’

Wolff stood and walked to the window again. ‘Come and look,’ he said, pointing. ‘That building over there, on the far side of the park, is the stock exchange. A busy place, every room occupied by clerks and other functionaries. A sniper operating over there is outside the bounds of likelihood. And that is the only building which looks directly towards this one.’

‘Even so–’

‘Downstairs, as you know, is a team of very fastidious security people who have emergency switches that can barricade stairways and disable elevators. Nobody who is even faintly suspicious is going to get up here, and security always check with me first, even when it’s my old mother who calls.’

‘I got past them with a phoney ID,’ Mike said.

‘But first they showed me your face on the security monitor, didn’t they?’

‘And you thought I looked honest, and you let me come up. I could have been an assassin.’

‘I let you come up because I know perfectly well who you are.’

Mike blinked at him. ‘What – because I made an appointment?’

‘No.’ Wolff smiled. ‘Use your imagination. If you were a layman, as I am, with occasional access to classified UN files, as I have, wouldn’t you take a look now and again?’

‘Oh.’

‘So,’ Wolff continued, ‘in the extremely unlikely event of somebody making it to my apartment door, I think there’s just enough vigour in those two to make holes in him, should such a thing become necessary.’

Mike thought it over. Finally he nodded. ‘I’ll pass on what you say. In the meantime, be careful. Don’t go out alone. If you plan to move around let us know, we’ll get you a shadow. Two shadows if we think you need them.’

Mike turned from the window. One of the marksmen was staring at him. It was the same look, he thought – half curious, half absent – that cows gave passers-by.

‘Remember what I told you, Andreas. Don’t rely on your troops. Stay alert.’

An hour after sunrise, two men in a black Ford pickup were parked 180 metres from the service yard of the Comfort Inn in Dallas. They were a fat man called Chuck and a thinner, younger one called Billy. Both were employees of Don Chadwick. For this surveillance job they had been equipped with high magnification monoculars, through which they watched a borrowed station wagon with false plates parked near the service elevator of the hotel.

‘Here we go,’ Chuck murmured.

They watched as Philpott got out of the elevator, opened the station wagon tailgate and stepped back into the elevator. He bent over and hoisted one end of a rolled carpet and began dragging it towards the vehicle.

‘Lord save us,’ Billy said. ‘No real puzzle about what he’s totin’ there.’

The carpet was obviously heavy and unwieldy. They could see sweat shine on Philpott’s face. He dragged the roll between his arms until the midpoint touched the edge of the tailgate, then he let go. The carpet dropped with a bump that Chuck and Billy could hear. Philpott bent again, picked the other end of the carpet up off the ground, readied himself behind it with spread feet, and pushed. The roll slid into the station wagon. Philpott folded it over, shut the tailgate and got in behind the steering wheel.

‘Just leave a good space behind him,’ Chuck said as Billy started the engine. ‘There won’t be too much traffic on the road this time of day.’

Philpott drove out on to West Kingsley and turned right, travelling south. At the first major dip in the road he looked in the rearview mirror and saw the black Ford pickup hanging back, a couple of hundred metres behind. As he took the turning for Trinity River and the Greenbelt Park, the mobile telephone in his pocket beeped twice. He took it out, thumbed the green button and put the phone to his ear.

‘Is it all right to speak?’ a voice said. It was C.W. Whitlock.

‘How are you doing that?’ Philpott demanded.

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re dead and rolled up in a carpet in the back of this vehicle I’m driving.’

‘You’re on your way, then?’

‘Bowling along, some distance ahead of a not-so-subtle tail.’

‘I wanted to be sure things were going as expected.’

‘As hoped, not as expected. I’m too steeped in wariness ever to expect much. Is anything happening there that I should know about?’

‘There’s a message from Sabrina.’

‘Any developments?’

‘Nothing yet. She’s in Berlin. Observation convinces her that Erika Stramm goes nowhere without her bear-like escort.’

‘Keep me posted on her chosen line of action. I trust her judgement.’

‘Very well.’

‘I’ll turn the phone off in another hour or so. If you’ve anything urgent to communicate after that, it’ll have to wait. Oh, and by the way, Chadwick paid cash. We now have a fat anonymous donation for whatever charity comes out of the hat.’