“You clever little bitch,” he said under his breath, whilst picking up the phone.
Lisa missed the same icon appearing in the top corner of her screen. She stood and stretched for a second, letting out a loud yawn, and set off into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. The Meyer-Hofmann surveillance team got a call from Von Klitzing just before a shift change, where two teams had been watching the Starnberg house around the clock. Back in the kitchen, the squeal of the kettle covered the sound of a car door closing outside the house. Pleased with herself, she took the fresh brew and went back into the office. She hit the print button, and a Brother Printer in the corner of the room purred to life. Drawing the first of sixty pieces of paper into its guts, ready to reveal her inky revelations. She had just reached down to pick up the first A4 side out of the print tray when a hand was placed on her shoulder. Spikes of static electricity shot down her arm and up the back of her neck, making her almost lose her balance. A scream of shock left her mouth at the same time as the day’s tensions found an earth and sought an escape.
“Darling, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you!” Whipping round, she saw her husband, his hands up in a gesture of fake surrender.
“Michael, you silly sod, you could have given me a heart attack!” She slapped his chest hard, it made such a hollow sound that she instantly regretted it. “It is you, isn’t it?” Fear suddenly raced back up her spine, as she considered the possibilities, if the man in front of her was not her husband after all.
“Yes, I’m sorry! Can you take a look at my heel, it’s killing me!”
Sitting down on the one chair in the room, Michael didn’t wait for her sympathy. Instead, he lifted his right leg and looked up at Lisa like a child after a fall, bracing himself for the pain to come. Kneeling, she gently removed his shoe and started on the sock, to much wincing and squirming from her patient. His sock was sodden with blood and stuck to the foot at the heel.
“I am just going to have to yank it off, darling.” She looked up into his face to see him bite down on his bottom lip and nod. With one pull, it was off.
It is amazing how much damage the drawing pin has done, she thought to herself, trying not to let Michael see how much it bothered her. The pin was buried deep into Michael’s heel, and a large black-and-blue circle had formed around its circumference, along with a crust of blood covering the drawing pin’s head. Getting her fingernails under its lip made it come out without much fuss.
“God, you can’t be doing this every day!”
“No, I know. I’ve been thinking about it on the way home. I had to make up some shit about why I was limping. I thought maybe teeth. I’ve got a doggy filling.”
“Oh no, Michael, teeth are the worst kind of pain.”
“You haven’t been wandering round with a drawing pin in your foot for twenty-four hours. Anyway, toothache is easier to explain than a shoe full of blood.”
“Do you really have to be in pain all the time?”
“Not all the time, but I don’t want to take any chances. If Hofmann gets back in control, I may never get back out!”
“No, this is crazy, Michael. We have to go to the police. I have got some evidence that points to financial irregularities. It will have to do. Did you find anything?”
“Christ, Lisa, you won’t believe it. I don’t know if the police can even handle it! What they are planning is military, it’s political—it’s enormous!”
“I know, Michael, look at this!”
The pair spent the next hour linking what Lisa had found with what Michael had seen and heard, their findings making them more and more nervous by the minute. By the time Michael sank into the soft leather of the lounge sofa, it was with a sense of doom and foreboding. Lisa had decided that tea was too weak for the job and was in the dining room preparing them both a large whisky, leaving Michael head in hands, searching his mind for inspiration.
Outside, a dark blue Ford van pulled into a parking space next to its identical twin in front of the house. The side doors of the van slid open, and two men exited, their black bodysuits making them almost invisible against the dense foliage surrounding the garden. Both jumped the garden fence with a scissor kick before crouching down in the cover of a garden shrubbery. One pulled a hand-held dish antennae from his rucksack and held it out in the direction of the house. The other pulled on a pair of earphones, giving his partner the thumbs-up. Back in the first van’s interior, a third man worked over a bank of electronic instruments that sent their signal via a small satellite mounted on the van’s roof, directly back to Gallery Street. Von Klitzing sat in the communication centre on his saddle chair, pushing himself slowly backwards and forwards between the table and the wall, wondering how this day could get any worse. A fury was building in his stomach as the voices of Lisa and Michael Jarvis filled the room.
Most certainly not Heinz Hofmann, he thought
Scratching at the ugly sore below his right ear, he mulled his options. Depressing a button on the control panel, he spoke to the team in Starnberg.
“I want it all on tape, whatever they are planning.”
“Shouldn’t we go in, sir?” one of his subordinates questioned from his control panel.
“No, not yet. How much do we have?”
“She has been logged into the PricewaterhouseCoopers intranet, and we believe she has a detailed record of most of the Austrian-based business. He has been able to tell her everything he learnt from you in Ellmau, sir.”
“Scheiße. Bring them in.”
The operator turned back to his control panel and depressed one of the multifarious buttons opposite him.
“Take them.”
The reaction to the order was instantaneous. The two men in the garden left their cover, dropped their tools, and made for the house.
Inside, Michael had come to the conclusion he could not do this alone. They had no choice other than to go to the police. Shaking his head, he rose and made for the bathroom, his bladder triggered into action by his decision. He passed Lisa as she returned with the drinks, giving her a quick peck on the cheek before heading for the stairs.
“Back in a minute, darling.”
The bright lights of the lounge turned the windows into mirrors, and Lisa watched herself enter the room, her face made even paler by the reflection in the glass.
God, I could do with some sun! she thought.
Staring into the darkness of the garden, she watched as her silhouette slowly changed. Confused by her reflection’s metamorphosis, she moved closer to the window. Her face became boxy, her skin darkened, and her reflection moved, although she was standing still. As she realised she was staring into a stranger’s eyes, a scream raced to raise the alarm. In that instant, the window lost its reflectivity. A milky white wall erupted, followed by a wave of reflected light, bouncing and kicking off the polished hardwood floor. The man had her before she could move, a hand closing around her neck, stifling her cry for help. A second rushed past her into the house’s interior, in search of Michael. Her assailant had a cold, brutish face, and she wondered how she had ever confused it with her own. The oxygen deficiency in her brain turned the lights out, and she slumped to the floor at his feet.
Michael had heard the window shatter and Lisa’s muffled scream. For some reason, he knew what was happening.
They know and they are here! His only concern was for his wife.