I speeded up. It caught my tail by surprise and his lights dropped back momentarily. Then he was back to his accustomed distance, even decreasing it slightly once or twice to let me know he could do it whenever he wanted to.
That didn’t bother me at all. I’d never thought I had a chance of outracing him in the bug that Averill had provided for me. In fact, it was even questionable whether its motor could stand the pace I was now setting much longer. But if I’d decided right it wouldn’t have to.
Luck was with me because there just ahead was what I’d remembered — a convoy of 7th U.S. Army jeeps and trucks filling the right-hand lane as far as the eye could see. I swung out into the left lane and began to pass them.
Apparently they’d been on the march for some time and road discipline had begun to slip. The rear trucks in particular were dropping farther and farther back, but throughout the length of the convoy the gaps between the trucks were far too wide. I waited until I was about halfway up the line, then cut sharply in between two trucks.
The effect was immediate. The truck behind me pulled up on my tail and began blinking its lights to tell me to get the hell out. I paid no attention and soon the driver gave up. But the one break in the convoy had alarmed the other drivers and they promptly closed up.
That left my tail out in the cold — and in something of a bind. He could either drop to the end of the column or hang on in the left lane and keep an eye on me. He chose the latter. And that was a mistake — although as with most mistakes he didn’t realize it until it was too late.
I stayed with the convoy until we rolled into Munich. Then I swung smoothly off to the right at the first promising side street, leaving my tail blocked by the continuing line of trucks.
I wondered if he swore silently to himself. And if it helped him any.
The plan called for me to leave the car at the airport where Averill would arrange for someone to pick it up. But the car was too dangerous for me to keep now. I parked it where it wouldn’t attract any attention for several days, walked to where I could catch a cab to the Bahnhof, then walked an additional three blocks to a not quite respectable commercial hotel where they wouldn’t wonder that my only luggage was a small black attaché case. And settled down for a good night’s sleep, confident that no one would track me down.
Of course, someone did.
He stood beside my breakfast table, beaming down at me.
“Ah,” he said, “it is you. Last night when I see you check in I think, perhaps. But then—” he cocked his head to one side and frowned to dramatize his bafflement — “the name on the registration card is not the one I remember from Zurich. But now,” he went on, his expansive smile back in place, “I see it is the same man behind the name.”
“Hello, Dietrich,” I said. “Or has your name changed since Zurich too?”
He sat down quickly and leaned forward on the table, spreading his hands. He was a round man with a round body and a round face on which a perpetual film of perspiration glistened. “No,” he said, “I am still Dietrich. It is my name and everyone knows who and what Dietrich is.”
And that was the best reason I could think of for his changing his name. I’d known him for some time but had only dealt with him once. Several years before I’d bought some information from him and then had got out of Switzerland a bare jump ahead of the police he’d sold me out to. To give Dietrich his due, there was nothing personal about it; it was just a matter of business to him. All the same I trusted him about as much as I would an electric eel.
“How’d you happen to find me, Dietrich?” I said.
“By chance,” he said, slapping the table. “By chance. I had business here in the hotel last night. And there you were, checking in at the desk.”
“And that’s all there was to it?” I said. “Nothing more than chance?”
“Of course not. What else could there be?”
“Someone tried to follow me into town last night. It could have been you.”
“No,” Dietrich protested, “not me.” The denial was automatic, but I believed it. Because for just a second his eyes had been unguarded, and I could almost see his busy mind at work speculating on how this information could prove useful to him.
I picked up half a roll and began to butter it “Well,” I said, “whoever it was, he was wasting his time. I’m quitting the business. Going home.”
“Good,” Dietrich said, slapping the table again. “Good for you. I too have quit the business. I have my own now — here in Muenchen.” For proof he fished a grubby business card out of his wallet and offered it to me.
I shrugged, popped a piece of roll into my mouth and took the card. It identified Dietrich as a Private Inquiry Agent and gave an address and phone number.
“Perhaps,” Dietrich said, “you can throw a little something my way sometime.” He smiled. “In this world friends should help one another.”
“Sure,” I said. I slipped the card into my breast pocket. I figured I would find it there the next time I sent the suit to the cleaners and throw it away.
Dietrich glanced ostentatiously at his watch. “I must go,” he said. He stood up and shook my hand formally in the German manner. “Vieles Glueck,” he said.
I wished him the same good luck and watched his broad back depart. Then I went back to my breakfast.
Of course, when I left the hotel he tried to follow me. I wandered apparently aimlessly through the business district and lost him.
There is something about camera shops that fascinates spies. Perhaps it’s a case of life imitating art since all spy movies seem to have mysterious camera shops in them. Be that as it may, my contact was in a camera store on a side street not far from the Frauenkirche.
It was a small place sandwiched in between two larger buildings and identifiable only by the clutter of Agfa and Kodak displays in the windows flanking the door.
A bell set above the door tinkled as I entered. There was no one about, so I stepped up to the counter and waited. When I decided I had waited long enough, I coughed twice, waited again, then called out into the silence, “Anybody here?”
No answer. No scurrying of feet as the shopkeeper rushed in to greet a customer. No movement of the curtain screening off the doorway behind the counter.
I didn’t like it. The shopkeeper had been alerted to my coming. He would have made the contact — unless something prevented it. And the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach said that the something that prevented it wouldn’t be pleasant.
I moved around the counter intending to pull aside the curtain — and never completed the movement.
There, crumpled on the floor, was the old man who had been my contact. Someone using a small-caliber gun had shot him neatly through the forehead.
Reflexively, my eyes flicked around the room. There was no sign of its having been ransacked. Which said it had been a professional job. The package — and I had to assume the killing was tied in with the package somehow — could be disguised as anything — microdots are versatile. And no professional would waste time looking for something he wouldn’t recognize even when it lay right in front of him.
And it had lain right in front of him — or almost. A cardboard box stuffed with envelopes containing processed film sat on a shelf on the wall behind the counter. The package was an envelope made out in the name of Erich Hofstadter.
“You’ve been seeing too many bad movies,” I had told Averill when he had explained what I was to ask for. Now, considering the body at my feet, I wished I’d seen a few of those movies myself.