far enough away that he would have the opportunity to conduct counter surveillance if he needed to take a direct route. In his single room, Victor changed into his new clothes. Suits were his preferred clothing for urban environments, but wearing one would make him stand out in Prenzlauer Berg, where men his age opted for more bohemian attire.
Earlier, he’d noted there were two possible locations from which to conduct surveillance — a chic coffee shop on the same side of the street as the apartment building, and a cocktail bar on the opposite side of the road. He entered the bar, bought a still lemonade with a slice of lime and sat outside.
The view wasn’t a perfect one but he could see the entrance to the building, and the bar justified his presence for what could potentially be many hours over several days. He took out a small notebook and pen and placed them on the table next to his drink. He made a record of anyone who entered or exited the building, and waited for someone who met his requirements. He was hoping to spot someone who looked like he or she wasn’t a guest — a maid or janitor perhaps — but he saw no one who fitted the bill.
Eventually, he watched a man and a woman leave the building at the same time. They were in their late twenties, a good-looking couple who knew it and couldn’t keep their eyes on where they were heading or their hands to themselves. As soon as they appeared, he could tell they were perfect for his requirements. In Victor’s line of work, love could be an extremely useful emotion to exploit.
It was easy to follow them. Even if he hadn’t been careful — which he always was — he doubted they would have seen him, let alone paid him any attention. They walked slowly, like most couples seemed to do, blissfully unaware of the amount of space on the sidewalk they took up. Annoyed singletons had no choice but to walk around them.
He followed them into a bar a few minutes after they’d entered. Inside, a lively audience of fans watched a Bundesliga game on several big screens. Victor spotted the couple at a table in one of the marginally quieter corners. He ordered a beer and stood where he could watch the couple while looking as if he was just another sports fan in for the game. The bar was warm and Victor watched the man take off his jacket and hang it over the chair. Like Victor, he had a beer, which he drank quickly. When the woman finished her white wine, the man stood up to get a second round. Placing his own beer down, Victor made his move, negotiating a path through the busy crowd while the man made his way to the bar.
Taking out his phone and pretending to write a text, he swayed a little as he squeezed past the table where the woman sat, brushing himself against the man’s jacket hanging off the chair. Victor felt the weight of keys in one of the pockets, and faked a stumble, the phone falling from his fingers. He cursed under his breath as he leaned over to retrieve it with his left hand while his right slid into the man’s jacket pocket to remove the keys. He stood up, shaking his head. In his peripheral vision, he saw the woman glance at him but there was no suspicion, just an amused smile, assuming he was a drunk sports fan.
At the bar, Victor took another mouthful of beer before leaving. He already knew where the closest locksmith was located and made his way there to get a copy cut. Returning to the bar, he handed over the keys to a barmaid, pretending he’d found them near to where the young couple sat.
The sports fans roared as the ball hit the back of the net.
It took a while to find a store that sold art supplies, where Victor bought paints, paper, brushes, pastels, and a bottle of pure graphite powder. At a cosmetics counter of a department store, he purchased a foldaway make-up brush with very soft bristles, blusher, and a bottle of perfume recommended to him by a friendly sales assistant when he asked for advice on buying for his girlfriend.
On his way back to his hotel he threw away his purchases save for the graphite powder and make-up brush. In his room, he changed into his suit and dipped the make-up brush into the graphite powder before folding it away and placing it in a pants pocket. He was running a little late for his appointment and walked slowly.
He found the realtor pacing outside the apartment building. She stood around five-seven, late twenties, smartly dressed in a navy trouser suit that gave her an air of pure business without hiding the very obvious facts she was an attractive and shapely woman. Her blonde hair was shoulder length and swept back from her face by the breeze. Predictably, her expression was one of annoyance and impatience. She checked her watch.
He was four feet away before she realised who he was. He gave her a polite smile. She didn’t smile back.
‘Miss Friedman, I take it,’ Victor said in a Hamburg accent. ‘I’m Mr Krausse. I’m sorry I’m late.’ He offered no explanation.
Without sincerity she said, ‘That’s okay.’
He acted as though he didn’t notice her tone.
‘Thank you for taking the time to show me around.’
He offered his hand and she took it. There was hardly any grip.
She motioned towards the front door. ‘Shall we?’
Friedman led him to the penthouse and unlocked and opened the door and stepped inside. Victor made sure to follow closely. The alarm system emitted a dull warning. There was a small box positioned in the far corner of the hallway where the walls met the ceiling. He couldn’t tell just by looking at it what kind of alarm system it was, but given the exclusivity of the apartments, the security system would be more sophisticated than a standard photo-sensor alarm. Probably a radar-based or more likely a passive infrared motion detector.
Radar-based motion detectors worked by emitting bursts of microwave radio energy, or ultrasonic sound waves, and reading the reflected pattern as those waves bounced back to the device. When an intruder entered the area and altered the pattern, the alarm sounded. With a passive infrared motion system, the device detected the increase in infrared energy caused by an intruder’s body heat. It wouldn’t be much fun trying to defeat either, but if human nature had its way, Victor wouldn’t have to.
He positioned himself to watch as Friedman pressed buttons on the keypad. It would have been impossible to get close enough to see which numbers she pressed without alerting her, but he could see the movements of her hand and elbow as her finger hovered over the keypad. She pressed the first button, then he watched her elbow drop, then pause, then drop again; another pause, and then it moved back up to the top for the final number. Victor repeated the pattern in his head until he had it memorised. Press, down, press, down, press, up, up, press.
The realtor guided him through the apartment’s lounge, kitchen, bathroom, and three bedrooms, the master of which had its own bathroom. Each room was lavishly decorated, leather sofas in the lounge, marble in the bathroom, stainless steel and granite in the kitchen. It had all the essentials of modern upscale living — dishwasher, huge wide-screen television, surround sound, latest games consoles and espresso machine. Everything a travelling mob boss could need.
He took his time walking around each room, examining every fixture and piece of furniture. He saw the realtor in his peripheral vision checking her watch with increasing frequency. He pretended not to notice.
Eventually he dragged it out long enough that her phone rang and he wasn’t surprised to see that she answered it without excusing herself. He nodded politely — a silent take-your-time signal — and she stepped into the kitchen to talk in private.
Victor hurried into the hallway. He removed the make-up brush from his pocket, unfolded it, and very gently swept the tips of the bristles against the alarm keypad. The fine graphite powder stuck to the oil left by Friedman’s finger on four of the ten numbered buttons. One, two, five and eight.
He heard her call finish and he lightly wiped clean the keypad with his jacket sleeve. He dropped the make-up brush into his pocket a second before she appeared.
‘Ready to go?’
As he walked towards the underground station, he put the one, two, five and eight together with the sequence he’d memorised — press, down, press, down, press, up, up, press. The code was therefore one or two, followed by five, eight and then either one or two again. There was no way of knowing which of the first and fifth numbers were one or two but it was a fifty-fifty chance. Alarms were constructed with mistakes in mind so he would be able to retype the code should he get it incorrect the first time.
Victor found that people whose jobs involved no danger were never as security conscious as they should be. For an apartment building with around a dozen properties, each with its own alarm system, to be completely secure each property would have its own code and that code should change for every new tenant. That was a lot for anyone to keep track of.
Maybe she would come back later to input a new code ready for Farkas’s arrival. It would be the secure thing to do. But in the fight between security and laziness Victor would put his money on laziness every time.
