Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

Half a kilometre from the place Mike was staying, Sabrina Carver emerged from her hotel at one minute after nine and got into her taxi. Twenty seconds later, as the cab pulled away, an inconspicuous grey Opel across the street started up and slipped into the stream of traffic three vehicles behind Sabrina’s car. The driver of the Opel was Einar Ahlin. Beside him, tightly belted in and angry, was Erika Stramm.

‘There is no need for this,’ she said as they clipped a red light to stay close to Sabrina’s taxi. ‘I’ve told you, keep the money. I’ll even give you a generous laying-off bonus.’

‘Not the point,’ Ahlin snapped.

Erika stared at him. It was ironical that he looked so much like the ideal of the people he hated. Today, wearing a black leather jacket and black polo shirt, he reminded her of a photograph she had seen of the arch-Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, relaxing with Hitler and Eva at a lodge by the Baltic.

‘I think you have forgotten the basis of our relationship,’ Erika said. ‘I employ and specify, you carry out my instructions and get paid for doing so.’

‘I think perhaps you have not properly understood the relationship in the first place,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the traffic. ‘You gave me the opportunity to embark on a mission against specific vermin. I was grateful for that, I am still grateful. But you cannot expect me to dismantle my determination.’ He glanced at her, his eyes wide. ‘You can’t expect me to chop the legs off my will. I am on a set course and that is that.’

She had never seen him like this. Before, he had displayed an easy-going temperament, a smoothness of style that added a fine sinister edge to his desire to slaughter Nazis. Now he looked like a bare-fanged fanatic.

‘Why am I being treated like a prisoner, Einar?’

‘You are not a prisoner,’ he said curtly.

‘You won’t let me do what I want. You’ve insisted I be here with you today. You’ve curbed my freedom and I call that being treated like a prisoner.’

‘You’re here with me because I want you to be close when the subject is hit. I want you to experience the zest of the event, the rightness of what I do. Then perhaps you will understand that I must carry on, and that it is in your interests as well as mine that I do.’

‘You read that article in the paper, for heaven’s sake. This man Wolff is not a target. He’s nothing to do with the Jugend von Siegfried. Anybody can see that.’

‘Any idiot might believe it, Erika, but it doesn’t fool me. That stuff is just more snow, more cover for a Nazi as rotten as the rest of them.’

The previous day Einar had come to the bar where they met once a month to perform the small ritual of lunch and the handing over of a cheque for his services. When Erika told him she had decided to let the authorities deal with the remaining members of the Jugend von Siegfried, he had gone very quiet. He would not eat lunch and, when finally she announced she was leaving, he would not let her go. He had used no violence against her, but she knew it would come to that if she tried to get away.

‘You should learn to absorb the messages and the lessons of omens,’ Ahlin said now.

‘I don’t understand that kind of talk.’

The previous evening, as they left the place where they had met, Erika saw Sabrina. She told Ahlin who she was, and felt compelled to spill it all, the coercion, the acceleration of what was probably inevitable. Ahlin had driven slowly along the street, following Sabrina until he found out where she lived. He had then booked a double room in a cold-water hotel opposite the much nicer place where Sabrina stayed. They had spent the night there, taking turns at watching the front of the hotel.

‘The police will be on the case very soon,’ Erika said. ‘You should pull out before that happens, before they’re swarming all over the Nazis.’

Ahlin expelled air between his teeth. ‘I might as well have said nothing to you,’ he said. ‘Try to get it into your skull, I don’t care about the police or anybody else. I have a job, a God-sent job, and I’m going to carry it through.’

‘Then do it without me.’

‘You stay and you witness this one hit. That is important, I told you why.’

‘I want to go home and see Gregor.’

‘He will wait. This won’t.’

He swung the car round a corner by a wide-fronted conference centre and parked it at the side of the road.

‘This is the place.’

He pointed behind them. Erika looked and saw Sabrina get out of her taxi and enter the building.

‘Didn’t I say so, when you wanted to argue during the night? Didn’t I say this woman would attach herself to the man Wolff? They are all part of a whole, don’t you see?’

‘Why follow her? You were coming here anyway, it was in the paper where he would be today.’

Ahlin gently eased Erika’s fingers away from the buckle of her seatbelt. ‘We are not going in there.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too many people, too much protection around Herr Wolff. I only ever tempt fate so far, and no further. We will follow him when he leaves.’

‘How will you see him in among the crowd?’

‘He is a protected person. He will come out while the show is busy. It will be quiet out here.’ Ahlin smiled thinly. ‘Rely on my judgement, Erika.’

‘You still haven’t told me why we followed the girl.’

‘I wanted to see if my instinct was right,’ he said. ‘And it was. She is part of what we oppose, she is integrated, whatever her motives.’

‘So?’

‘So I will break my working rule.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I will kill both Wolff and the girl.’

Wolff left the exhibition centre at one o’clock. An armoured Mercedes Benz saloon, property of the Viennese police, was driven up to the front door and he came out with his two lumbering bodyguards behind him. Mike and Sabrina hung back, watching his flanks, guns cocked and ready under their coats. Another two marksmen were at windows on the second floor.

As soon as Wolff was in the Mercedes Mike and Sabrina got into a police Volkswagen which had been hastily rented, together with its driver, after tight bargaining in the refreshment room. Five hundred dollars to the police widows’ fund would let them have the car, driver and the use of a long-range rifle for six hours. Anything after that would be subject to fresh negotiation.

‘Where are they taking him?’ Sabrina asked as they raced along back streets towards the north of the city.

‘A hotel in the Mühlenbeck district,’ Mike said. ‘It’s out of the way, on a quiet street. He has offered to work on finishing the ICON security programs while he’s in Berlin, and he’s had a load of computer equipment installed in a top-floor suite at the hotel. I suppose we should be grateful for that.’

‘What’s security going to be like?’

‘The Austrians have agreed to two extra marksmen in the building with him. They’re from the Berlin police, both hotshots.’ Mike patted the heavy rifle on the seat beside him. ‘I’ll be in the next building with this baby.’

‘And I’ll be watching the door, as usual.’

‘Don’t be bitter, Sabrina.’

When they reached the hotel the Mercedes drew up close to the door and Wolff was hurried inside. Sabrina moved into the front passenger seat beside the police driver. Mike went to the warehouse next door to the hotel, where police had arranged that he should have a window seat looking directly into Wolff’s suite.

He called Sabrina on the mobile and confirmed he was in position. ‘It’s tidy,’ he said. ‘The goons are sitting at either end of Wolff’s work table, watching him do his stuff. The extra marksmen should be here in a few minutes. I’m ready to go ballistic if anything irregular happens.’