Colin Forbes - The Janus Man

`The Hotel Jensen?'

`Exactly. And the mysterious Dr Berlin.'

By train from Hamburg Hauptbahnhof it was a forty-minute run non-stop to Lubeck. In his anxiety to leave the city, Tweed had arranged it so they arrived at the Hauptbahnhof fifteen minutes before the express came in.

They bought single tickets, crossed the high bridge over the tracks and descended the staircase to the platform. To pass the time, Tweed paced up and down the platform with Newman. On the open bridge above them Martin Vollmer stood watching them.

A thin-faced man with pale eyes and small feet, he waited until they had boarded the express – until the express started moving north. He then ran to the nearest phone booth and dialled a number.

In his bedroom at the Hotel Movenpick in Lubeck Erwin Munzel, alias Kurt Franck for registration purposes, again sat by the phone. He snatched up the receiver on the second ring.

`Franck speaking…'

`Martin here. From Hamburg. Aboard the 11.15. Copenhagen Express. Bound for Liibeck. Arrives 12.05. Accompanied by companion. Tweed is coming…'

Munzel slammed down the phone without a word of thanks. Hotel telephones were tricky – you never knew when a bored switchboard operator was listening in.

He had arrived in good time back in Lubeck. After paying his final call on Ziggy Palewska he had caught the 7 a.m. express from Hamburg. The train's ultimate destination was far distant Oslo – via Copenhagen and the Elsinore train ferry which transported it across the arm of the Baltic to Sweden.

Accompanied by companion. That had been a cryptic warning – Tweed was not travelling alone. Well, that was OK. He'd be at Lubeck Hauptbahnhof to take a good look at this companion. He extracted a picture of Tweed from the inner lining of his executive brief-case, a glossy head-and-shoulders print. 'I'll know you, my friend,' Munzel said to himself, replaced the photo and stretched out on the bed. From the Movenpick it was no more than a five-minute walk down the road to the station.

Inside the phone booth Vollmer dialled another number. While he waited for his connection he took out the ticket he had purchased for Puttgarden. He crushed the unused ticket and dropped it. He had stood behind Tweed at the ticket window to hear his destination.

`Dr Berlin's residence,' a throaty voice said. He was through to the mansion in the Mecklenburger-strasse on Priwall Island. `Martin speaking. Tweed is coming..

`Await further instructions.'

The connection was broken before Vollmer could respond. Bighead, Vollmer said aloud and slammed down the phone. Back to Altona. To await further instructions. From Balkan. The man he had never seen.

Aboard the Copenhagen Express they had a first-class compartment to themselves. They sat in corner window seats, facing each other. The express thundered north across the North German plain, through neatly cultivated fields of ripening wheat. The land stretched away under a clear blue sky. It was going to be another lovely summer's day.

`This must be the most dangerous problem you've ever faced,' Newman remarked as he lit a cigarette. 'One of your four sector chiefs is a rotten apple.'

`I'm afraid so, Bob. That is the only fact I have to go on so far…'

`Any suspicions? Grey, Dalby, Lindemann, Masterson?'

`None at all. They have all been vetted up to their eyebrows. They come out pure as driven snow. It's rather depressing.'

`And you still think General Vasili Lysenko is behind it?'

`I don't think. I know. I can sense his fine Russian hand. All the hallmarks of the supreme professional…'

`How do you propose to go about it – smoking out Lysenko's tame hyena?'

`I suggest you concentrate on finding out everything you can about Dr Berlin. The philanthropic guardian of refugees intrigues me. The fact that he lives on the border. You know the history of Priwall Island?'

`No,' said Newman.

`Once in Lubeck I met a British ex-tank commander who served under Monty. He told me a memorable story. At the end of the war he was at the head of his armoured unit – in the very first tank to reach Travemunde and be ferried across to Priwall Island. He was racing the Russians to seize the whole strategic island – which controls the seaward entrances to Lubeck on its east and west coasts. He was exactly half-way across that island when he saw a Soviet tank approaching from the other direction. The Red Army tank commander held up his hand to halt our chap. The British tank commander did the same thing – held up his hand to stop the Red Army in its rush to seize Lubeck itself, even take over Denmark if they could. And that was where the border was drawn. At the precise point where those two tank commanders met…'

`So that's why Priwall Island is cut in half – with the Soviet minefield belt extending across its middle?'

`Exactly. At least the western channel to Travemunde is under Western control. So passenger ships from Sweden and Finland can cross the Baltic and berth there. It's one of the weirdest spots on earth. And that, I remember reading, is where Dr Berlin has his residence,' Tweed remarked.

`The odd thing is he only spends part of his time there. He's like a grasshopper. I remember some of the old Kenya hands used that very word. Hops all over the world, they said. But no one knew where..

`Then you'd better find out. I think we are coming in to the outskirts of Lubeck. I wonder what it holds for us?'

The taxi ride from the Hauptbahnhof to the Hotel Jensen was only a few minutes. They could have walked it. Approaching the bridge crossing the river on to the island Lubeck sits on, they passed a curious pair of medieval towers, leaning precariously and topped with witches' hat turrets.

`The famous Holstentor,' Tweed remarked. Lubeck's trademark. That and marzipan…'

They met the blonde-haired woman as they carried their cases inside the Jensen. In her early forties, Newman estimated, she was tall, slim and had a pointed chin and startling blue eyes which stared straight at him.

He stood aside to let her pass and she smiled, still staring, then disappeared into the outside world. Newman looked back at her and the man behind the reception counter grinned.

`You know her, sir?' he asked in English.

`Unfortunately, no. She's staying here?'

`Oh, yes. A guest each year during the summer season. That is Diana Chadwick. A very popular lady…'

`With any normal man, I should imagine…'

`I shouldn't say it, perhaps.' The man paused and smiled again. 'Very popular with most men, yes. But not always so popular with the members of her own sex. They fear the competition, I sometimes think.'

`Diana Chadwick,' Newman repeated while Tweed filled in his own form. 'I've heard that name somewhere…'

`She used to be a famous society beauty in Africa many years ago.' He smiled a third time. 'Not too many years, I hasten to say…'

`Not Kenya by any chance?' Newman asked.

'I think possibly it was Kenya. Go to Travemunde, ask some of the British boating crowd there. She spends a lot of her time with them. Thank you, sir,' he said to Tweed, and pushed the pad towards Newman for him to register.

General Lysenko had insisted they moved their centre of operations to a fifth-floor office in the seven-storey concrete block of a building in Leipzig. He stood by the window now while Markus Wolf arranged his files brought up from the basement.

`I felt like a bloody mole trapped underground in that basement,' he snapped. 'We're likely to be here sometime, I take it.'

`Munzel can move very quickly,' Wolf replied in his slow deliberate voice. 'Witness how he dealt with the British agent, Fergusson, and that piece of garbage, Palewska. On the other hand, with a man like Tweed he will take his time. Patience is so often the key to success, I find.'