Colin Forbes - The Janus Man

`Using the data I learnt from Generoso, I need to find out what my four chosen disciples are really like. I've never actually seen them on their home ground. That was a mistake. We vet them, build up files – but I need to get to know them as human beings, get them talking. One of them just may let something slip.'

`Time for your meeting. Feel more up to it?'

`This is going to be a grim meeting – for me. The point is I must in no way give even a hint of my suspicions.' Tweed stood up, straightened his polka dot tie. 'Oh, yes, I can handle them. That happens to be my job.'

His tone was brisk, his manner almost jaunty. Monica smiled – the four men waiting in the conference room were going to be put through the wringer. Tweed rampant.

`Gentlemen,' Tweed opened from his chair at the head of the table, 'I am not satisfied with your performance. Your reports from the field are skimpy – give no idea of the atmosphere out there…'

`My report did,' Grey interjected, full of confidence, his moonlike face flushed pink. 'All quiet on the western front…'

`Please don't interrupt. Your turn will come.' Tweed stared at Grey for a moment and then continued, his manner businesslike. 'I have told you all before, atmosphere – what the Germans call fingertip feeling – is the key to what the Russians are up to. I expect you all to remedy your slackness at this meeting. You first, Guy.'

Dalby, head of the Mediterranean sector, the catlick of brown hair looped over his forehead – was it his trademark? Tweed wondered – opened a file. He spoke rapidly, his dark eyes darting round the table.

`My people are puzzled. All normal contacts – informants – have dried up. Some have vanished from their usual haunts. I have issued instructions for an all-out drive to find out where the opposition agents are. They, too, have vanished. Atmosphere? I have the impression we are looking at a smokescreen. I want to break through the fog, find out what is being prepared behind it. That is my report.'

`Forget the facts for a moment,' Tweed said. 'What do you sense is going on?'

`Preparations for some major operation. We must watch out, be on the alert.'

`Any ideas now – you said at the last meeting you'd try to work it out – why Fergusson was murdered.'

`A trap. To get you to fly to Hamburg. They will try to kill you.'

There was a shocked hush round the table. Dalby never minced his words, never went all round the mulberry bush like Hugh Grey. Tweed glanced down the left-hand side of the table at Lindemann, who sat beyond Hugli Grey. He had his array of four different-coloured pencils, was scribbling away, so presumably Dalby was blue. A curious habit.

`Erich,' Tweed called out, 'your impressions, please.'

`Hard facts are what we need. I have some. Balkan has arrived in the West. Has probably set up his HQ in Grey's sector. Came in via Oslo. The action is starting in the North.'

Harry Masterson, who faced him, leaned forward, his manner bluff, full of confidence. 'And who the bloody hell is Balkan?'

`Code-name for their controller in the West,' Lindemann replied.

`You seem to know a lot – from your off-side sector…'

`Scandinavia is not off-side.' Lindemann spoke without rancour, with precision. 'It is the zone where NATO expects the first Soviet assault if they ever attack. That is why we have the big NATO nerve centre in the mountains just north of Oslo. My informants are most reliable. Balkan is very dangerous. He must be located, identified.'

`Bloody marvellous, isn't it?' Masterson rumbled in his public school accent. 'He waits till this meeting to tell us about what he calls their most dangerous agent. Christ! Are we working as a team, or are we not?'

Tweed kept quiet, watching the two men, who had never liked each other. He was trying to imagine any of the four grouped round the table wearing a beret. Lindemann was more than a match for Masterson's onslaught.

`The data about Balkan was too classified to transmit over the phone. Tweed has this information.'

`You have?' Masterson turned his aggressive personality on to his chief. 'Isn't that something we should all have been told as soon as you knew?'

`Lindemann has explained. I share his mistrust of the normal communications system. You know now. Why do you think you were brought back here so urgently?' Tweed ended tersely.

`I'd like to register a formal protest,' Grey broke in. 'And I want that registered in the minutes of this meeting. And who, I would like to know, is taking those minutes?'

`No one,' Tweed informed him.

`I would further like to register another protest. It is established procedure that minutes are taken of every meeting…'

`That procedure was just put on the shelf – for this particular meeting,' Tweed told him. 'No written reference to Balkan. Not without my express permission. Understood?'

`If you insist, I suppose so…'

`I beg your pardon?' Tweed's tone was icy.

`I withdraw that remark. Unreservedly.'

`Then perhaps you would like now to make your contribution?'

`All quiet on the western front,' Grey repeated. He was rather fond of the phrase. He beamed complacently. 'With important reservations,' he went on after a suitable pause. 'My contacts with the refugee organizations in Schleswig-Holstein lead me to expect action by the opposition imminent. The nature of that action is as yet unknown.' He glanced at Lindemann. 'Nor do I have any data on this so-called Balkan…'

`He is the top man – so difficult to detect,' Lindemann replied without looking up. He was using the red pencil to scribble notes. Red, Tweed presumed, must be Grey.

`Is this man among your refugee informants?' Tweed asked as he wrote a name on a sheet from his pad, folded it once and handed it to Grey. The name he had written was Ziggy Palewska.

Grey glanced at it, refolded the sheet and returned it to Tweed. 'I have never heard of the person.'

Which was astute, Tweed thought. Grey had concealed from everyone else even the gender of the informant. Tweed turned to Masterson who was twiddling a pencil between his large hands. Full of physical energy, not a committee man, Harry Masterson, unlike Grey, who revelled in long meetings.

`Harry, how goes it in the Balkans?'

`Damned frustrating. All known Soviet personnel and their hyenas have run for cover. I've sent certain men across the borders behind the penetration zones. Any day now someone will let something slip. The Curtain has dropped with a clang – but as I have just said, I have people on the other side. Something's brewing. Take my word for it. I can't wait to get back…'

`I'm afraid you'll have to,' Tweed said, seizing on the opening, 'because I'm giving all of you one week's leave. In this country. No quick trips to Monte Carlo.' He looked quickly at Masterson as he said this, then he stood up.

`Inform your deputies to take charge in your absence.'

`But we've only been in our new posts six months,' Grey protested. 'We need more time to work ourselves in. Then maybe you will get more comprehensive reports…'

`One week's leave. In this country,' Tweed repeated. 'And I shall want a word with each of you separately before you start that leave.'

Monica waited until the end of the day before she tackled Tweed. He had spent the afternoon having brief interviews with each of his sector chiefs, meetings from which Monica had been excluded. 'I want them relaxed,' he had explained. 'They may think you are recording our conversations.'

He called Newman at the Hotel Jensen at five o'clock. As he had hoped, the reporter was just back from a day with Diana at Travemunde. His call was brief. He asked Newman to go to the Hauptbahnhof, to call him back from one of the public phone booths at the station. Within ten minutes the phone on his desk rang.