Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘Want to call the law?’ Winship said. ‘I got my mobile.’

‘No, I think we’ll just hold on a second before we do anything.’

‘Looks like they’re coming across,’ Winship said.

‘What?’

‘Those guys that were nosing into your car. They’re coming this way.’

Chadwick watched as they approached the restaurant. They stopped a short distance in front of the awning and spoke to a waiter. He nodded several times and pointed to the roof without looking up. The men disappeared under the awning.

‘We’ll soon see what this is all about,’ Chadwick said.

He tried to smile at Winship but found he couldn’t. Anxiety had gripped him so quickly he hadn’t gauged how severe it was. He cleared his throat, took out his handkerchief and dabbed his brow just as the two men appeared. They spoke to the waiter at the desk and he pointed to Chadwick. They came across. Up close they seemed very tall. They had the kind of serious, no-nonsense faces that appeared never to have been touched by smiles.

‘Donald Chadwick?’ the taller one said.

‘That’s me. How can I help you, gentlemen?’

The tall one produced a small black leather folder and flipped it open. On one side was an ID card with his picture; on the other side a badge glittered.

‘I’m FBI Special Agent Louis Cole. This is Agent Hubert Mullins. Could we speak privately, Mr Chadwick?’

‘I’ll be down in the bar,’ Winship said, out of his chair already. ‘If anybody wants me, just call.’

When he had gone the FBI men sat down. Agent Mullins was obviously used to being silent. He sat back, visibly withdrawing from the confrontation, becoming atmosphere.

Louis Cole folded his hands on the table and looked squarely at Chadwick. He was blond and broad-shouldered, not at all the kind of wimp Chadwick had heard the FBI recruited.

‘Do you have any idea why we want to talk to you, Mr Chadwick?’

‘None at all.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you straight off. Two days ago certain documents came into the possession of the FBI. They paint a detailed picture of your involvement in the financial affairs of the late Harold Gibson of Dallas.’

‘Harold was a dear friend,’ Chadwick said, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘We did business together over a period of years, and Harold was a board member of several companies within which I have executive standing.’

‘The financial matters detailed in the documents refer to money raised in this country and gifted to an illegal organization in Germany.’

‘I know nothing about that.’

‘I have to tell you, Mr Chadwick, that as a result of other matters raised in the documents, we have already impounded files, ledgers and diaries relevant to the company trading as Lone Star Realties and another called Chadwick, Pearce Associates.’

Chadwick looked astonished. ‘How did you get those papers? They’re private, they’re locked away.’

‘We have special powers under the Constitution, Mr Chadwick. The three banks and the firm of accountants involved were all very co-operative, as the law requires them to be.’

Chadwick’s mouth had gone terribly dry. ‘What – what about my associate, Mr Pearce…’

‘He is already co-operating with us, as of ten o’clock this morning.’

Chadwick wet his lips. ‘I think I want to have my lawyer with me before I say anything more.’

‘That is your right. Now we’d like you to accompany us to the Bolton Rooms Hotel in Dallas. You can call your lawyer from there. We have an operations room set up in the hotel and a couple of my superiors would like to ask you some questions.’

Superiors. His superiors. There were men on the case loftier and more nerve-rattling than this one.

They stood up. Chadwick took a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off three. He put them under a water glass. ‘Off the record, Agent Cole, would you say my position is serious, at all?’

‘I would say so, yes.’

As they went down the stairs Agent Mullins spoke. His voice was soft and so close that Chadwick felt its warmth on his ear.

‘You’re looking at a real long stretch,’ he said.

Philpott sounded rattled. The call had brought him awake too suddenly. As a result of that, he informed Mike Graham, he would probably never get back to sleep.

‘The position with Andreas Wolff is critical,’ Mike said. ‘He’s due to turn up here in Berlin at ten o’clock this morning as a celebrity guest at a computer games fair. That’s in two hours time, and the minute he shows he’s going to be a wide open target for Juli Zwanzig’s hit man.’

‘You haven’t been able to trace this Einar Ahlin?’

‘We’ve nothing to go on. Apart from his dippy girlfriend, nobody knows him. He has no buddies, there are no places he hangs out – we don’t even have an address where he puts down his head at night. The girlfriend doesn’t expect him to show up at her place for at least another two days. We’re clueless.’

‘Then Andreas Wolff must not be allowed to appear in public. He must be made aware he is this lunatic’s prime target.’

Mike ran his gaze around the hotel room, breathing steadily, holding down the temptation to start shouting.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘that issue is what prompted this call in the first place. It’s the very matter I raised when you picked up your phone. Wolff won’t play ball. I just spent ten minutes on the phone trying to convince him of the risk he’d be taking. When I spoke to him the time before, he got the picture, he could see the kind of danger he was in. But now he’s had time to sit and think about it and he believes as long as he’s surrounded by people, he’ll be safe.’

‘What makes him think that?’

‘He believes the assassin is a fastidious type. He only harms his targets, he won’t risk other people’s lives.’

‘That’s rubbish.’

‘I told him about the car bomb, but he said that had been timed to go off when no one else was around. I said I knew different, but he wouldn’t listen. The fact is, Wolff just won’t duck down out of view. Especially when ducking down means cancelling a public appearance at a computer fair. Events like that are his idea of the big time.’

‘What about the Stramm woman? Wasn’t Sabrina able to alert her that Wolff is a wrong target?’

‘Erika Stramm is missing from home. Not been seen since early yesterday, and her only close contact, the Russian guy Gregor, is mystified.’

‘There’s one slim hope,’ Philpott said. ‘We managed to get both main Berlin daily papers to run stories about Wolff in connection with the computer show. Both pieces cover his parentage, his background, there’s even a few childhood pictures. Maybe Ahlin will see a paper and get the message.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I presume Wolff will have a proper team of marksmen covering him while he’s in Berlin?’

‘Afraid not,’ Mike said. ‘The Austrian clodhoppers are coming with him. National pride, all that stuff.’

‘Then you’d better cover him yourself, Mike. Get Sabrina on the job and as many sharpshooters from the Berlin police as you can persuade to do us an unofficial favour.’

‘Believe me, sir, I’ll do all I can to protect Wolff.’

‘I don’t want him coming to any harm. God, it’s unthinkable.’

Mike was about to say ‘trust me’, but he lacked the confidence to back reassurance on that level. ‘I’ll keep you informed, sir. Sorry I broke into your sleep time.’

Philpott mumbled something and hung up. Mike finished dressing, decided to skip breakfast and got reception to call him a taxi. Before he left his room he strapped on a shoulder holster and loaded up his Harrington and Richardson Defender, a five-shot .38 he kept as a memento of his days with Delta. Apart from its sentimental associations, the weapon had a 3-inch barrel, which gave reassuring accuracy over medium-to-long range.