Colin Forbes - The Janus Man

`How can you keep it quiet?' Tweed asked. 'Someone must have heard Franck – he screamed when he went down…'

`You'd be surprised how people don't hear things like that. The manager knows. I had a word with him before I came up. He won't talk. Hotel guests aren't keen on acts of violence. He took me into the area. There's a door under your window you can't see from up here, a door he locked and I have the key.'

`I'd better get out of here for the moment,' Tweed said.

`Definitely. Use Newman's room…'

'I think I can make the dining-room. I have a friend down there.'

`Better still. Your colour's coming back.'

While Kuhlmann was using the phone Tweed pointed to a drawer. Newman pulled it out, turned it upside down. Shirts, socks and handkerchiefs spilled on to the floor. He picked up one of the handkerchiefs embroidered with Tweed's initials.

`This,' he said, 'is the borrowed handkerchief. I'll give you mine – just in case some eager beaver searches me.'

`You might bring me some tissues from the box in the bathroom,' Tweed suggested, planting his feet on the floor, testing his strength before he stood up.

Newman brought the tissues and handed him one which he had screwed up. 'My handkerchief is inside that. If you don't mind keeping it.'

Tweed shoved it inside his jacket pocket and then started using the other tissues to dab at his jacket front, drying out the water he'd spilt down it. Diana was bound to spot the dampness, to ask what had caused it. He took several steps round the room, then paced more briskly. His head had stopped pounding.

Kuhlmann put down the phone, said the team would be there inside ten minutes, so they'd better get moving. And he'd be back the following day to talk some more.

`They'll have trouble smuggling Franck out,' Tweed said. `Oh, they'll scrape him up, cart the bits away.'

Tweed stayed up half the night in Newman's room, listening in silence to his account of his experiences in East Germany. Earlier he had gone down to the dining-room, assured Diana it was only a stomach upset. That covered the fact he hadn't felt like eating. Coffee, however, helped to clear his head.

He saw her safely to her room. As the door closed and he turned round he saw Harry Butler sitting in a chair close to the elevator, reading a copy of Lubecker Nachrichten, the local paper. He nodded to him and went to Newman's room.

`So,' he commented as Newman finished his report, 'you've had a pretty grim time.

`And now we know Dr Berlin is a fake. The trip was worth it to find that out.'

`I suspected it. But suspecting is one thing, knowing is another. Lysenko must have trained an impostor all those years ago. It's creepy – their long-distance planning. I want this kept quiet, Bob.'

`You mean we don't tell Kuhlmann?'

`Definitely not. Nor that bastard Peter Toll, who sent you in. Keep it just between the two of us.'

'Why?'

Tweed stirred in his chair, drank some more of the coffee sent up by room service. 'Because if I'm right, if Janus is what I suspect he is, we face the most appalling scandal in London if this ever got out. The press would have a field day. Like the Duke of Wellington, I'm feeling my way forward, tying knots in a rope. If I'm right, how I'm going to solve the problem God only knows. Janus is not only Lysenko's man in London – he may also be a mass murderer.'

`Janus? You've used that name twice…'

`The codeword I cooked up with Monica for the rotten apple sitting in my own barrel. Janus, like the January god. The man who looks both ways – to the East and the West.'

Tweed checked his watch. 3 a.m. He stood up, felt his legs were normal, walked into Newman's bathroom and quietly opened the window, gazing down into the well. Men in plain clothes were moving about. Kriminalpolizei. The body was covered with a tarpaulin. Through the open door beneath his own window he saw more men arriving, two carrying a stretcher. He shivered, closed the window silently.

`They're about to take Franck away,' he said, sitting down again. 'In the middle of the night. No one in the hotel will be any the wiser. Kuhlmann has been very cooperative – covering up the whole business, which is what I want.'

`So they won't know in Leipzig? They'll go on thinking Franck is still after you?'

`Exactly that. Also Pete Nield came over with me. Someone – as I expected – followed me from the airport. Butler followed them to an apartment in Altona. I have the address in my wallet. I'm giving it to Kuhlmann in the morning. He may find a way of neutralizing this character. He could just be the main link in the communications system Lysenko must have between here and East Germany.'

`And I caught sight of Harry Butler in the restaurant when I first arrived. You've brought over the big battalions.'

`I think we may need them. I sense we're close to the climax of this business…'

`Which I still don't understand,' Newman remarked. 'Janus is the traitor in the Park Crescent setup. Balkan is the controller of Markus Wolf's spy network in West Germany..

`Lysenko has deliberately made it complex. I'm convinced their set-up is diabolically simple. I think Janus and Balkan are the same man. A stroke of genius on the part of our Russian friend.'

`But that would mean the same man – Janus in London, Balkan over here – is controlling both our network and theirs. Theoretically, he'd be fighting himself…'

`But only theoretically,' Tweed pointed out. 'He'd be in a unique position to manipulate my agents the way he wanted to. Lysenko had pulled off an unprecedented coup.'

`Had?'

'I'm going to locate Janus and destroy him – and bring down Lysenko with him.'

Tweed's expression was grim as he stood up again and went to the bathroom. He came back after peering out of the window.

`I can go back to my own room, get a bit of shut-eye. They have gone, taken away the body. We'll talk about how we'll go about it in the morning.'

Tweed was finishing his breakfast in the room at the back of the Jensen when Newman reappeared and sat down, looking at Diana who was inserting a cigarette in her holder.

`You should have seen the meal he's had,' she said. 'Five rolls, lashings of butter, tons of marmalade. Nothing much wrong with his stomach today.'

`I was ravenous,' admitted Tweed. 'But I'm a new man now. Time to get cracking. And where have you been?' he asked Newman.

`To hire a car. An Audi. I foresaw something like this. We ride everywhere today. No walking.'

`Is Tweed all right?' Diana asked.

`Last night Bob insisted on getting a doctor in,' Tweed said quickly. 'He diagnosed a mild bout of food poisoning. Silly quack said I shouldn't walk more than two hundred metres for the next two days. The trouble is, Bob has taken him seriously.'

`I should think so, too,' Diana agreed forcefully. 'When you eventually came back to the restaurant last night you looked really out of sorts. And you couldn't eat anything. By the way, you said you had an appointment this morning. I think I'll go shopping, spend some of my ill-gotten gains…'

Tweed looked up sharply at the remark, then cursed himself for his mistake when she replied.

'I was only joking. You looked quite severe…'

Tut it down to lack of sleep. Yes, you go shopping, enjoy yourself. This afternoon we're going to Travemunde.

`Can I come too?' she asked eagerly. 'I left some things I need on the Sudwind- and I'm simply dying to see Ann Grayle's face when I tell her we've been to London. I can tell her?'

`Why not?'

Tweed stood up with Newman, glanced across to where Butler was lingering over his coffee. This morning he wore an open-necked blue shirt, cinnamon-coloured slacks and wrapround tinted glasses. Even Tweed found him difficult to recognize; Diana certainly wouldn't spot him when he followed her.