“It looks all right to me,” grumbled Wiechert. “Anyway, the forensic boys cleaned it out.”
“They were looking for prints, not measurements,” said Schiller. “Look at this closet in the passage. It’s two yards wide, right?”
“About that.”
“The far end is flush with the door to the call girl’s bedroom. The door is flush with the wall and the mirror above the headboard. Now, as the bathroom door is beyond the built-in wall closet, what do you deduce?”
“That I’m hungry,” said Wiechert.
“Shut up. Look, when you enter the bathroom and turn to your right, there should be two yards to the bathroom wall. The width of the cupboard outside, right? Try it.”
Wiechert entered the bathroom and looked to his right. “One yard,” he said.
“Exactly. That’s what puzzled me. Between the mirror behind the washbasin and the mirror behind the headboard, there’s a yard of space missing.”
Poking around in the hall closet, it took Schiller thirty minutes to find the door catch, a cunningly concealed knothole in the pine planking. When the rear of the closet swung open, Schiller could dimly discern a light switch inside. He used a pencil to flick the switch, and the inner light came on, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“I’ll be damned,” said Wiechert, looking over his shoulder. The secret compartment was ten feet long, the same length as the bathroom, but it was only three feet wide. But wide enough. To their right was the rear side of the mirror above the headboard next door, a one-way mirror that exposed the whole bedroom. On a tripod at the center of the mirror, facing into the bedroom, was a video camera, a state-of-the-art high-tech piece of equipment that would certainly provide clear-definition film despite shooting through the glass and into subdued lighting. The sound-recording equipment was also of the best. The entire far end of the narrow passageway was ceiling-to-floor shelving, and each shelf held a row of video-cassette cases. On the spine of each was a label, and each label had a number. Schiller backed out.
The phone was usable, since the forensic men had cleaned it of prints the previous day. He called the Präsidium and got straight through to Rainer Hartwig, Director of First K.
“Oh shit,” said Hartwig when he had the details. “Well done. Stay there. I’ll get two fingerprint men down to you.”
It was eight-fifteen. Dieter Aust was shaving. In the bedroom the morning show was on television. The news roundup. He could hear it from the bathroom. He thought little of the item about a double murder in Hahnwald until the newscaster said, “One of the victims, high-class call girl Renate Heimendorf.
That was when the Director of the Cologne BND cut himself quite badly on his pink cheek. In ten minutes he was in his car and driving fast to his office, where he arrived almost an hour early. This much disconcerted Fräulein Keppel, who was always in an hour ahead of him.
“That number,” said Aust, “the vacation contact number Morenz gave us. Let me have it, would you?”
When he tried it, he got the “disconnected” tone. He checked with the operator down in the Black Forest, a popular vacation area, but she told him it appeared to be out of order. He did not know that one of McCready’s men had rented a vacation chalet, then locked it after taking the phone off the hook. As a long shot Aust tried Morenz’s home number in Porz, and to his amazement he found himself speaking to Frau Morenz. They must have come home early.
“Could I speak to your husband please? This is Director Aust speaking, from the office.”
“But he’s with you, Herr Direktor,” she explained patiently. “Out of town. On a trip. Back late tomorrow night.”
“Ah, yes, I see. Thank you, Frau Morenz.”
He put the phone down, worried. Morenz had lied. What was he up to? A weekend with a girlfriend in the Black Forest? Possible, but he did not like it. He put through a secure-line call to Pullach and spoke to the Deputy Director of the Operations Directorate, the division they both worked for. Dr. Lothar Herrmann was frosty. But he listened intently.
“The murdered call girl, and her pimp. How were they killed?” Herrmann asked.
Aust consulted the Stadt-Anzeiger lying on his desk.
“They were shot.”
“Does Morenz have a personal sidearm?” asked the voice from Pullach.
“I, er—believe so.”
“Where was it issued, by whom, and when?” asked Dr. Herrmann. Then he added, “No matter, it must have been here. Stay there, I will call you back.”
He was back on the phone in ten minutes.
“He has a Walther PPK, Service issue. From here. It was tested on the range and in the lab before we gave it to him. Ten years ago. Where is it now?”
“It should be in his personal safe,” said Aust.
“Is it?” asked Herrmann coldly.
“I will find out and call you back,” said the badly flustered Aust. He had the master key for all the safes in the department. Five minutes later, he was talking to Herrmann again.
“It’s gone,” he said. “He might have taken it home, of course.”
“That is strictly forbidden. So is lying to a superior officer, whatever the cause. I think I had better come to Cologne. Please meet me off the next plane from Munich. Whichever it is, I will be on it.”
Before leaving Pullach, Dr. Herrmann made three phone calls. As a result, Black Forest policemen would visit the designated vacation home, let themselves in with the landlord’s key, and establish that the phone was off the hook but the bed had not been slept in. At all. That was what they would report. Dr. Herrmann landed at Cologne at five to twelve.
Bruno Morenz cruised the BMW into the complex of concrete buildings that made up the East German border control and was waved into an inspection bay. A green-uniformed guard appeared at the driver’s side window.
“Aussteigen, bitte. Ihre Papiere.”
He climbed out and offered his passport. Other guards began to surround the car, all quite normal.
“Hood open, please, and trunk.”
He opened both; they began the search. A mirror on a trolley went under the car. A man pored over the engine bay. Morenz forced himself not to look as the guard studied the battery.
“The purpose of your journey to the German Democratic Republic?”
He brought his eyes back to the man in front of him. Blue eyes behind rimless glasses stared at him. He explained he was going to Jena, to discuss purchases of optical lenses from Zeiss; that if all went well, he might be able to return that same evening; if not he would have to have a second meeting with the foreign sales director in the morning. Impassive faces. They waved him into the Custom Hall.
It’s all just normal, he told himself. Let them find the papers themselves, McCready had said. Don’t offer too much. They went through his attaché case, studied the letters exchanged between Zeiss and BKI in Würzburg. Morenz prayed the stamps and postmarks were perfect. They were. His bags were closed. He took them back to the car. The inspection of the car was finished. A guard with a huge Alsatian stood nearby. Behind windows, two men in civilian clothes watched. Secret police.
“Enjoy your visit to the German Democratic Republic,” said the senior border guard. He did not look as if he meant it.
At that moment there was a scream and several shouts from the column of cars across the concrete dividing reservation, the column trying to get out. Everyone spun around to look. Morenz was back behind the wheel. He stared in horror.
There was a blue Combi minivan at the head of the column. West German plates. Two guards were dragging a young girl out of the back, where they had discovered her hiding under the floor in a recess built for the purpose. She was screaming. The girlfriend of the West German youth driving the van. He was hauled out in a circle of straining dogs’ muzzles and submachine gun barrels. He threw his hands up, bone white.