`At this hour? He'll be asleep in his flat at Highgate…'
`I said get him on the phone! Tell him to drive down here the moment he's dressed. I'll be waiting for him.'
`Anything you say. My, she really is something, this Diana…'
Tweed was agitated. Monica watched him as she made the call to Nield. He prowled restlessly round the office. He pulled the flaps out of his jacket pocket, straightened them. He clapped the palms of his hands against his backside. He fiddled with his tie. Couldn't keep still.
She finished the brief call, put down the phone and tried to calm him by talking.
`Nield is on his way. Expects to be here inside thirty minutes. No traffic on the roads at this hour. Now, did you notice anything significant during your visits? You wanted to see them on their home ground.'
`Yes, I did. A landing-stage projecting into The Wash. It had recently been reinforced with fresh timber. Then Clematis Cottage. Masterson loathes the sea. I went to the lavatory, opened the window. Leaning against a shed with other rubbish was a ship's wheel. Not ten minutes' drive away I found a large power cruiser called Nocturne. Chopin composed nocturnes…'
`I do know that…'
`No one was about. I climbed aboard, peered inside the wheelhouse. The vessel had what looked like a brand new wheel. In Lindemann's bathroom I opened a wall cupboard. There was a bottle of sable hair colourant. He doesn't drink. In a cupboard in his sitting-room I found half a glass of Scotch. At Dalby's place I found nothing…'
`Thank God for that. My head's spinning…'
`Except in the kitchen. Dalby had been slicing French beans. No sign of the knife. That's it.'
`My, we have been a busy little bee. Might I enquire how all those different things link up?'
`I've no idea…'
`So I might not enquire. Drink your coffee. Nield will roll in soon now.'
`You asked how these things link up. That's the point. I'm convinced there's a link missing.'
`Wouldn't it be strange if Bob Newman supplied the missing link?'
Part 2 Death Cargo
Thirty-Four
It was 1 a.m. Moscow time. Inside his large office in the four-storey building visitors to the Kremlin never see, Mikhail Gorbachev stood staring at General Vasili Lysenko. He wore a smart grey two-piece suit, a white shirt, a red tie.
His large thick-fingered hands rested splayed on the conference table which separated him from his visitor who stood stiff as an automaton. Gorbachev's large rounded head was stooped, his lips pouched. A distant bell chimed once.
`I had you flown here at short notice from Leipzig,' Gorbachev began in his quick, choppy way of speaking, 'because the consignment of heroin for England has now reached Leningrad. Ready for shipment. The largest amount of heroin ever transported as one consignment my advisers tell me. Five hundred kilos.'
`It is enormous…'
`Like your responsibility for seeing it arrives safely. This will do more to demoralize the population of that island than a dozen atom bombs. You understand the weight of your task?'
`Yes, general Secretary…'
`The English are now alert to the heroin peril. Any attempt to move this massive consignment through the normal channels would fail. They watch the airports, the seaports. So, we use the entirely novel route you have devised.'
`Balkan will not fail us…'
`He had better not fail you!' Gorbachev corrected.
As he spoke he hammered his clenched fist on the polished surface of the table, then began moving about the room, his right hand stressing his words with hard chopping movements.
Lysenko listened with a sense of fear mingled with awe. The General Secretary was an overpowering mixture of physical and mental dynamism. He exuded sense of purpose, supremely certain of the direction in which he was moving.
`While I talk peace the demoralization of the West must be accelerated. Heroin is the main weapon, England the main target.' Gorbachev swung his bulky figure through a half-circle, suddenly facing the other man. He gave a broad smile, throwing his visitor off balance. 'Of course, you have my full confidence, Lysenko.'
`Thank you..
`Of course we know at the moment the London Central Drug Squad is concentrating on Holland, the chief continental point of departure for drugs from South America bound for England.'
`That is true.'
Lysenko was again startled by Gorbachev's grasp of details. As soon as this new sun had risen over the Kremlin Lysenko had realized the way to deal with him was tell the truth. It was this realization which had kept him in his present post as a general in the GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence, when many of his old colleagues had been shoved into the waste bin of history.
`So,' Gorbachev continued, his expression now grim, 'they will not be expecting the consignment by the new route. And not a word about it to Markus Wolf.'
`Really? He would resent it if he found he was being excluded..
`Exclude him. Wolf is a monument now. Almost thirty years at his present task. He may be Deputy Minister for State Security in the DDR. Who cares? A monument,' he repeated. `I've had to shift them all over the Motherland. Men who have grown slack and comfortable, who thought they were indispensable. I dispensed with them.'
`I understand.' Lysenko still stood stiffly to attention.
`Relax, Comrade. I'm not going to eat you. Yet! One thing worries me. Tweed. I told you I read his file. He is the one man who might sniff out this immense heroin consignment.'
`He is still in London. Balkan has confirmed that. He says he is certain Tweed will return to Germany. Tweed never gives up…'
`That is why I worry. You know the tremendous effort put into transporting the consignment secretly to Leningrad. Munzel has failed once. Normally he wouldn't get a second chance. He only has this fresh chance because you say he is the best. And it must be done by an East German. No risk of egg on our face.'
`Wolf does know about the other consignment which will be moving shortly – the shipment of arms from Czechoslovakia via the DDR to Cuba for Nicaragua.'
`Doesn't matter. That is a little local affair compared with the heroin. Down to you, Lysenko. Supervising the transport of the heroin into England. That's all.'
Gorbachev stared at Lysenko from under his thick eyebrows. He had almost more hair in the brows than on the rest of his balding head. He waited until his visitor reached the door before he gave a last instruction.
`Lysenko! No communication, no reference to the heroin by the normal channels. Telephone, teleprinter or computer. The Americans have developed sophisticated equipment to penetrate our communications system. The problem has not been solved. If you have to contact me, use the phone – but refer to it as 'the cargo'. Just that phrase. Your plane is waiting. Get back to Leipzig…'
General Vasili Lysenko had a lot to think about on the flight to Leipzig. At Moscow he had boarded the Tupolev 134 as the first passenger, bypassing the normal formalities and security checks. They had given him his own section of the aircraft closest to the air crew's cabin, curtained off from the rest of the plane.
He was always relieved to leave Gorbachev's presence still holding his present rank. You just never knew which way the General Secretary was going to jump next. He was turning the Soviet Union upside down. No one who didn't come up to scratch was safe, regardless of position or track record.
Dawn was a bar of lurid light on the distant horizon. Lysenko was unaware of it as he thought of what he had
