amount in the centre of the back of the trimmed photo. Using his fingertips, he smeared the glue smoothly, removing any excess from the edges. He lifted the photo carefully, reversed it and placed it exactly inside the blank ruled rectangle in the new folder.
`Now we wait until it is dry, then we make it official.' He took a rubber stamp from his pocket together with an inking pad.
`Once I stamp the photograph with the official seal you are in business. The Border Police,' he repeated. 'Again in plain clothes, again on special assignment…'
`Tracking drug dealers again?'
`That would be excellent. Oddly enough, there has been much talk on our grapevine – which extends not only all over the DDR, but also beyond its frontiers to the East. Talk of the movement of a huge consignment of heroin. That you don't mention.'
`When we are on the move again you expect us to be stopped?'
`Inevitably. There are checkpoints everywhere. Constant patrols. And, I am a magician. I believe I told you before. You are no longer Albert Thorn. You have become Emil Clasen. Do not forget. And Gerda knows.'
`What about my River Police folder?'
`That I destroy. Burn to ashes in that fire…'
`That fire worries me,' Newman remarked, 'if you don't mind my saying so. The smoke from the chimney shows someone is here. I thought of that when I was watching the armoured car.'
Falken leaned forward and squeezed Newman's arm. 'I could use you in Group Five. But we have two choices – freeze to death or risk the fire. After all, Norbert has a fire all the time he is here. It is cold and damp by the canal. And no one can remember when Norbert is supposed to be here or back at his flat.'
`You seem to have thought of everything.'
`I wonder what I have not thought of? That is what always is haunting me.'
Karl Schneider drove back slowly along the road, his eyes switching from left to right and back again. Dressed in farmer's clothes, he wore a shabby peaked cap and under his left armpit he felt the bulge of the 9-mm Walther tucked snugly inside its shoulder holster.
Schneider was driving a farm truck carrying a load of hay in the open back. He had been driving for two hours and the sun was high in a clear blue sky. The country fields spread out on either side and he felt he was back in the old days. Thcy had been good times. Often a girl to take behind a hedge. They knew a thing or two, those country girls. That was before he had met Alma.
His expression grimaced at the thought. She was the one who had prodded him into joining the Border Police. 'You ought to better yourself, serve the State…' Screw the State. She was ambitious was Alma. For herself. Nagging cow.
He forced her out of his mind. Concentrate on the job. The reference to promotion was uppermost in Schneider's mind. If he had more money he'd get himself a girl on the side. Some nice willing girl to take his mind off Alma. He'd show her – where ambition led. To an intimate place.
He had driven over the elevated highway once without taking any notice of the lock-keeper's cottage, his attention distracted by a man on a motor-bike who overtook him. Not by the man actually. By the girl who rode pillion behind, trying to hold down her skirt which kept flying up, exposing a pair of slim legs. Stupid tart, wearing a skirt on a pillion. If he'd been the motor-bike rider he'd have shown her how stupid she was.
He came to the point where he'd completed his run, then turned back. This time when he approached the elevated section he was on the side of the highway nearest the cottage. He saw a curl of smoke rising from the chimney. Pretty warm day for a fire. Then he remembered the canal alongside the tumbledown building. That place would always be damp.
His eyes roved over the cottage, took in the little shed near the back. That would be the outside lavatory. In the middle of the field of rye rose a large canvas-covered hump. He slowed down, studying it curiously. The front of a farm tractor protruded from the open end of the huge sheet of canvas. He frowned, slowed further. No farm tractor was as big as that – as long as that.
Slyly, he kept on driving until he was well past the cottage. He came to where a cinder track led down into a hollow. At the rear of the hollow was a pile of hay. He glanced in the rear-view mirror, saw the highway was deserted, turned down into the hollow and pulled up. Should he radio Leipzig? No. He'd check the cottage first: if he found the fugitives the credit would be his.
Schneider approached the rear of the covered tractor by a devious route, circling round the back where the ground sloped down, out of sight of the cottage. About a hundred metres from the hump he dropped to his knees and crawled slowly through the rye, now high enough to hide him completely.
Reaching the back of the hump, he stood up after listening for several minutes. He lifted the canvas and stared at the rear end of a Chaika. Something the man with glasses in Leipzig had said came back to him. Three bicycles found hidden beneath some undergrowth.
His mind worked slowly. They'd have needed other transport. They'd never have walked the long distance to the nearest village. They'd have needed a car. Maybe a Chaika?
The peasant cunning of Schneider, the foxy character Markus Wolf had immediately observed, told him he was on to something. He'd watch the cottage before he made a move. He had the high-powered field-glasses in his jacket pocket they'd given him in Room 78.
He found a small hillock surrounded with rye, lay down on it and focused his glasses on the tiny shed which was the lavatory. Whoever was inside had to come out to relieve themselves. That way he'd find out how many of them there were – who they were. It was only mid-afternoon. Plenty of time before dark.
An hour later a man walked out of the cottage and headed for the lavatory shed. Schneider focused his glasses. Thorn! Albert Thorn! That bastard River Police officer. And through the glasses he did look rather like the man whose picture he'd been shown on a poster in Leipzig.
Schneider rested the glasses on the ground, still lying full length amid the rye. Thorn had gone inside the shed, shut the door. Schneider hauled at the butt of the Walther and let go as his sweaty hand slipped. Cursing, he dragged a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped both hands.
Grasping the Walther again, he heaved it clear of the holster. Holding the weapon in his right hand, he flicked up the safety catch with his left thumb. The gun was ready to fire. He laid it beside the glasses which he raised again to his eyes.
Ten minutes later he watched a second, taller man emerge, walk to the shed. Looked like the swine who'd been with Thorn, the man who hadn't said a word. He was sure it was him. Schneider sweated some more, this time with excitement. He'd wait until dusk. Then he'd move in on them.
Newman and Gerda sat round the table in the living-room. It was Gerda's turn to watch the road and she was in the kitchen. She had made more coffee and the two men drank and talked.
`This witness you told me about,' Newman said. 'Can you tell me anything more about him?'
`It's a her. She was loyal to the regime until her son kicked over the traces. Some misdemeanour, insulting a Vopo when he was the worse for drink. They put him in a labour battalion. She's hated their guts ever since. She's sixty-something. I want you to hear her story from her own lips.'
`About Dr Berlin?'
`About Berlin, yes.'
`Afterwards I go back over the border past that watchtower?'
`You go back over the border, yes.' Falken checked the time. `Nearly dusk. Your turn to take over from Gerda. Stay on watch too long and your concentration goes. Like those people at airports who check the X-ray machines. Take your coffee with you.'
Newman walked into the kitchen, put down his cup of coffee on the iron range. Gerda was stifling a yawn as she stood by the window. It was almost dark inside the cramped kitchen.
`Your turn?' she asked and gave him a warm smile, handing the glasses over.
`Treacherous light this,' he said as he moved to the window. 'You imagine you see things.'
`So, stay alert. Don't let your imagination wander.'
She gave him a friendly punch on the forearm and disappeared into the living-room. He heard her say she was going out to the lavatory. There was a slam as the heavy front door closed. Then a sudden silence.
In the blue dusk he could see the headlights of cars moving along the highway. People going home from work. More traffic than there had been since they'd arrived. In the west the invisible sun had sunk behind a ridge of
