imprisonment…'
'I was upstairs helping Klara,' Dietrich began.
'Was he, Miss Beck?' Stoller enquired. 'Be careful how you reply since criminal proceedings may be involved.'
'I'm confused…' Beck started choking on her cigarette but was saved from saying more by the appearance of Martel brushing dirt from his sleeve. There was dried blood on his knuckles where his hands had hit the cellar flagstones. Peter came into the room behind him and spoke to Stoller.
'He was imprisoned in a cellar like a pig-pen but they left the key on the Outside of the door – it saved shooting off the lock.'
'Well, Dietrich?' Stoller asked.
'He is an imposter… I was sure he was an assassin sent to kill me… After he made an appointment I phoned The Times in London… They told me Johnson is in Paris… I have many enemies…'
The Delta leader was talking like a machine-gun, gesturing to indicate his alarm, the words tumbling out as he struggled forcefully to make his story sound plausible enough to make Stoller doubt the wisdom of preferring charges. It was Martel who guided Stoller to a decision.
'I suggest we get to hell out of this den of nauseating clowns. The atmosphere here smells even fouler than it did in that filthy cellar…'
The three BND cars reached the exit, turned past the heap of dog corpses lying in the road and headed back towards Munich.
'In a minute,' Stoller said to Martel, 'we come to where I left Claire Hofer parked in your Audi – where you left her. She recognised me and blasted hell out of her horn to stop us. Then she blasted more hell out of me to hurry to the schloss. That girl likes you,' Stoller commented with a sideways glance.
'I'll bear it in mind – and thanks for keeping tabs on me with the chopper – and for battering your way into the fortress…'
'Why did you visit Dietrich?' the German asked.
'To set the enemy at each other's throats. To convince him he is being betrayed, which I believe is the truth. It may throw a last-minute spanner in the works of Operation Crocodile. And God knows we're close to the last minute…'
Claire made her remark as Martel drove them in the Audi back to Munich. Stoller's motorcade had long since vanished as he hurried to reach the airport to catch his flight to Bonn.
`I assume we cancel out Erich Stoller now as a possible assassin?'
'Why?'
Tor God's sake because he rescued you from the clutches of that swine, Dietrich…'
'And what will be the prime objective of the security chief who is the secret assassin?' Martel enquired.
'I don't follow you,' she said with a note of irritation.
'To act in a way that will convince Tweed and I that he is not the man we're looking for.'
'You can't mean Erich Stoller is still on the list.'
'Yes. He is no more cleared than the others. Let's hope those records we're collecting from Munich Airport do tell us who we're looking for.'
CHAPTER 25
Tuesday June 2: 1400-2200 hours
Name: Erich Heinz Stoller. Nationality: German. Date of birth: June 17 1950. Place of birth: Haar, Munich.
Career record: Served with Kriminalpolizei, Wiesbaden, 1970-1974
… Transferred to BND, 1974… served as undercover agent inside East Germany, 1975-1977… Appointed. chief, BND, 1978…
Tweed again skip-read the file McNeil had handed him. Examining dossiers produced this reaction: the more you tackled the faster you absorbed them. Tweed pushed the file back across the desk to McNeil. He rubbed his eyes and yawned before asking the question.
'What do you think of Stoller? You never met him – which can be an advantage. His personality doesn't intrude, you concentrate on the facts.'
'He's by far the youngest of the four – in his early thirties. Isn't that unusual – to become chief of the BND at his age?' 'Chancellor Langer personally promoted him over the heads of God knows how many more senior candidates. He has a reputation for being brilliant…'
'I detect a 'but' in your inflection,' McNeil observed. `Well, he did spend two years behind the Iron Curtain.. 'But you said he was brilliant…'
'So we start going round in circles again.' Tweed frowned and leaned forward to tap the neat pile of folders McNeil had arranged. 'I'm convinced that in one of those folders is the answer – a fact pointing straight at the guilty man. It's at the back of my mind but I'm damned if I can bring it to the surface.'
`Maybe Martel will spot it when he reads the copies I'm taking with me to Miinich this evening…'
'It worries me, McNeil,' Tweed said quietly, 'you're breaking all the regulations by taking even copies of those dossiers out of the country…'
`I'll be covered by my diplomatic immunity pass. Martel will meet me as soon as I get off the plane. Nothing can happen while I'm in the first-class section of the plane. I'm quite looking forward to the trip…'
`I'm having you escorted to Munich with an armed guard,' Tweed decided. He reached for the phone, dialled a number, gave brief instructions and listened. 'He'll be here in half an hour,' he told McNeil as he replaced the phone. 'It will be
Mason – he says he's the only one available.'
'At least he will be company on the flight.'
Tweed looked at her and marvelled. Some of these middle-aged English women were extraordinary. They undertook the most dangerous missions as though they were taking a trip to Penzance. He watched as she packed the copy files in a special security briefcase. Her own small bag had been packed hours ago.
'You're not to chain that thing to your wrist,' he told her.
`Why not? I'm doing this job.' She spoke sharply as she locked the case, extended the chain from the handle and clamped the cuff of steel round her wrist, snapping shut the automatic lock. Both knew why he had said that.
Tweed would sooner lose the case rather than subject McNeil to a frightful ordeal – and instances had been kriown where attackers used the simple method of obtaining such a case. They chopped the hand off at the wrist.
1800 hours, the American Embassy, Grosvenor Square. In a second-floor office Tim O'Meara stood holding his executive case while his deputy, James Landis, listened on the phone, said yes and no, and then replaced the receiver.
`Well?' O'Meara demanded impatiently.
`Air Force One is on schedule over the Atlantic. It will touch down at Orly in good time for the President to be driven direct to the Gare de l'Est and the Summit Express…'
`Then let's get to hell out of here so we're at Orly ourselves in good time…'
'A curious report came in about a half-hour back, sir – concerning the investigation into the murder of Clint Loomis on the Potomac. Apparently a nosey international operator in Washington listened in on a call which came through from…'
'I said come on!' O'Meara blazed, cutting off his deputy in mid-sentence.
1800 hours, Elysle Palace, Paris. In the courtyard outside the main entrance and behind the grille gates leading to the street Alain Flandres watched the anti-bomb squad going over a gleaming black Citroen. In a few hours this car would transport the French President to the Gare de l'Est.
As always, Flandres could not keep still – nor trust anyone except himself. As two men directed a mirror at the end of a long handle underneath the car he stood to one side and watched the mirror image.
