The television annoyed him. He turned it off and stared at the receding ceiling, letting fragmented thoughts of his third wife come to him. She was slipping away. Their separation and his drinking had brought them to a state of alienation he couldn’t bear. All that was left was the little girl. They’d called her Femi, the Egyptian for “love.” But that wasn’t going to be enough to keep them together. It had been the one thing that had pushed them apart. His wife had quit work, and he’d had to come out of retirement to fund it, but he hadn’t wanted to go back into the Company because he’d heard it had all gone bad in the 1990s.
The stress rose in his chest. He rolled off the bed to the mini-bar and sucked down a miniature of vodka and a scotch. He went back to the bedside table, opened James Hewitt’s novel, and shook his head in dismay. They couldn’t even put the bookmark back in the right page.
His cell phone vibrated, Leena sending him the elevator codes.
They were sitting in the front of the Moroccan tea shop on Susannenstrasse; it was five in the afternoon. Any view of them from the street was obscured by the ranks of hookahs piled up in the window. Foley wasn’t impressed by the report that Spokes had just given him. He sensed the situation was getting out of control, could feel the weight of a heavy decision gathering on his shoulders.
“Damian Rush checked into the Park Hyatt,” said Spokes. “He’s been out at the port most of the day, seems to be doing an article on the collapse of the German manufacturing miracle.”
Foley said nothing in reply, drummed his fingers on the table.
“Lüpertz is in his office, and Ms. Remer is back in her condo,” said Spokes.
“I’m going to tell you this so you know what’s happening here and perhaps that will help you understand what we’re going to have to do? All right?” said Foley. “Schafer and Rush were together in Rabat.”
He now had Spokes’s full attention.
“After the July bombings in London, MI5 was desperate for intelligence and MI6 sent Rush to ask some questions for them. He and Schafer worked together on some of the interrogations.”
“Right. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that they were here together in Hamburg.”
“And that Rush left MI6 over a year ago and is now a journalist.”
Spokes fell silent.
“When Schafer’s contract was terminated along with the others’, I went to Rabat to close down the ‘black site’ just after the November election,” said Foley. “That was when I discovered that the private contractors’ memo was missing. And six weeks’ work later, by process of elimination of the other two members of Schafer’s Rabat squad, here we are in Hamburg with Schafer and Rush.”
Spokes could sense Foley hardening with each of these revelations.
“They still have to meet,” said Spokes.
“I know that. And physical meetings and material exchanges are the most dangerous moments for operatives,” said Foley, quoting to Spokes from the manual. “And what do you think Schafer is doing about that, with all his field experience from the days of the Berlin Wall?”
“He’s trying to confuse us.”
“He’s not trying. He is,” said Foley. “We lost him last night and we lost him again this morning. He knows we can’t ask the Germans for help and we’ve got limited reliable resources at our disposal. So he’s spreading us thin on the ground. We’re already watching three corners: Rush, Lüpertz, and the wild card, Marleena Remer.”
Spokes had suspected it would come to this. It was the nature of cover-ups. Once containment looked hopeless there was only one other course of action.
“What did the Turk find this afternoon?” asked Foley.
“The elevator opens out into her apartment on the top floor,” said Spokes, on automatic. “There are two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, a walk-in closet for her clothes and shoes, a kitchen, dining room, a huge L-shaped living room, where he left the listening device, and an office. On the other half of that floor there’s an art gallery with around twenty works in it. More interesting is what’s below. That just consists of a room within a room.”
“And?”
“It was locked. Arslan said the door looked serious and the walls were made out of brick.”
“Has the cleaner ever been in there?”
“No, and she only does the six-foot walkway around the room when Marleena tells her to.”
“Anything else in her apartment?”
“No safe,” said Spokes. “Arslan mentioned that she had two spare legs of slightly different colors in the walk-in closet. That’s it.”
“Are those elevator codes still operational?”
“We intercepted an SMS from Leena to Schafer giving new codes.”
“Tell the Turk to come and see me.”
The elevator to the Park Hyatt hotel dropped into an upmarket shopping mall, which meant that the Turk did not have to wait outside in subzero for the Englishman to make an appearance at six o’clock that evening.
Rush embarked on a circuitous route to the Hauptbahnhof before doubling back past the St. Jacobi and St. Petri churches and ended up going down into the Jungfernstieg station. The Turk didn’t want there to be any chance of Rush seeing him in such a well-lit place. He hovered for a minute before the Englishman came back up with a copy of the Hamburger Abendblatt under his arm. Arslan watched Rush from the station as he headed up the Ballindamm on the side of the road where the buildings were. Arslan tracked him from across the street under the trees next to the Binnenalster Lake. Rush went into the Café Wien, took a table, stripped off his coat and woolen hat, went to light a cigarette, remembered just in time, and put it back in the packet.
The Turk paced the walkway beneath the trees, nervous and trying to keep warm. This was going to be his only opportunity. It was very dark under there, and the branches clacked overhead. The intense cold meant that there was no one around. Even the traffic, in the early evening on a day of business, was light. He watched as Rush ordered a coffee and read the newspaper in the well-lit café. The Englishman seemed to be studying columns of figures, something like the stock market numbers.
Rush took out his cell phone, looked around him, decided against it. Too many people. He paid the waiter for the coffee, put his coat and hat back on. He still had his cell in his hand.
The wind was cutting, and the Englishman winced as he came out of the Café Wien. He looked back up the street and then across the bridge between the two lakes. Arslan willed him to cross the street which, when the lights changed, he did. Rush walked between the trees before moving out to the railing above the steepish bank down to the water’s edge. He lit a cigarette under the lapel of his coat and made his phone call. Arslan moved quickly, using the trees for cover. Just as Rush closed down his cell, the Turk was on him, hit him with a savage blow across the side of the neck that tipped the Englishman over the rail and down the bank. Arslan vaulted the rail and scrambled down to the water’s edge, where Rush had come to rest. He heaved him into the icy water and held him under. There was a brief struggle, and it was all over. He kicked him out into the lake, picked up Rush’s cell phone, and threw it in after him.
It was a short walk from the hotel to Leena’s condo on Schanzenstrasse. Schafer was excited at the prospect of seeing her again. It had been dark for nearly two and a half hours by the time he set off, just before seven o’clock. He picked up a tail waiting for him under the bridge. It didn’t bother him.
He entered the elevator codes and went up to her apartment. The doors opened onto a wooden floor and Leena in a black miniskirt, boots over the knee, black tights, a long-sleeved black top, and a necklace of stainless steel lozenges. Her blonde hair was piled high, and makeup disguised the scar tissue on the side of her face.