Rhinoceros

'Hurry, Marler is waiting…'

Harry Butler opened the door of his room after Marler tapped in a certain way. He hustled them inside, closed, locked the door.

'What's the rush?' Tweed asked.

'Bad news,' Harry announced. 'Pink Shirt, big man, ugly. Directing the thugs at Reefers Wharf. Staying here.'

'We saw him,' Paula said.

'The news gets worse,' Harry went on. 'Delgado is staying here. Well disguised, hair trimmed short, stoops, carries a rubber-tipped stick. I saw his eyes. Always tell a man by his eyes.'

'How on earth did they get here so quickly?' Paula wondered.

'Easy. Caught a later flight.'

'But how could they know we were coming here?' Paula persisted.

'The frisky little runt who followed us to the departure lounge at Heathrow,' Tweed reminded her. 'There was a board outside with 'Hamburg' in big letters. He'd beetle off, call his boss.'

'Oh, I'd just forgotten him. They're horribly well organized.'

'So we'll be better organized,' Tweed replied.

While they were speaking Marler had taken a Walther out of his large hold-all, handed it to Harry. He gave him another one for Nield. More presents followed. Grenades, tear gas canisters, smoke bombs, an Uzi machine pistol. Marler then produced more – for Pete Nield.

'Starting a new Gulf War?' Paula asked mischievously.

'Could be like that,' Harry warned.

'Where is Nield?' Tweed asked.

'In the next room.' Harry jerked a thumb to his right. 'It was lucky. We arrived separately. He's outside somewhere – prowling round to get the feel of the place.'

'I have to tell you something…' Tweed began.

Harry listened, arms folded across his powerful chest, saying not a word. Tweed explained in detail about their visit to Dr Kefler at eleven that night, gave him the address, showed him the area down by the docks on a map of the city he'd acquired from the receptionist at the Four Seasons.

I'll be there,' Harry said, glancing at the marksman's rifle Marler had given him. 'I've bought a motorbike. Follow the taxi in that. When you get out I'll hoof it. Don't like the sound of what this Kefler said at all. Don't like where he lives. Docks. At night…'

'I feel reassured Harry is coming,' Paula said as they left the Renaissance. She squeezed Tweed's arm, whispered. 'Look who's ahead of us.'

A stooping man plodded along about twenty yards ahead of them. He carried in his right hand a rubber-tipped stick. His hair was trimmed very short. Tweed grabbed Paula's arm and swung her round so that, like himself, she was pretending to gaze into a shop window.

'That's how Harry described the new Delgado -I would never have recognized him.'

'We have things to do,' Tweed warned. 'Get back to the Four Seasons – personally I want a quick shower – have dinner, then we go see Dr Kefler.'

'The shower's for me, too. I'm not very hungry.'

'You will be if you don't eat – hungry in the middle of the night.'

'He's gone!'

She had stolen a glance up the street and it was deserted. Tweed looked, grunted, took her arm, guided her across to the pavement on the other side of the street. A whole line of vehicles, many of them large trucks, were parked for the night.

'He's gone into one of the arcades we passed on our way to see Harry,' Tweed explained. 'Walking up this side of the street we're almost invisible behind these trucks if he reappears…'

They reached the main street running past the platform and landing stage. Tweed was about to turn left when Paula tugged at his arm. She nodded to her right.

A short distance away a tall man in a straw hat was operating a video camera. Mark Wendover. As they watched, with his back to them he swivelled the camera to take pictures of the Alster, of a ferry coming in. Then he quickly swivelled it into a different direction, aiming the lens at a building – the entrance, the ground floor windows, higher up to the first floor. The imposing building was the Zurcher Kredit Bank.

'He's at it again,' Paula protested. 'Doing his own thing. Mavericking.'

'Well, if that's the way he works…'

'Something I've been meaning to tell you,' Paula said as they approached the hotel entrance. 'Kept slipping what passes for my mind. Before we left Park Crescent – you were out of the room – Monica told me that when that awful screaming started on the Internet the phone went dead.'

'It did?' replied Tweed dismissively. 'I thought she was calling various contacts to see if their systems were all right.'

'That was later,' Paula said emphatically. 'She reckons the phone was dead during the whole awful experience. Afterwards, too. For a couple of minutes.'

'A glitch…'

'Listen, do! The Internet is linked to the phone system.'

'Intriguing.'

Annoyed, Paula gave up. When she reached her room she dived into the bathroom to take the shower she would have welcomed hours earlier.

In his room Tweed postponed the shower while he called Cord Dillon at his private number in his apartment.

'What is it, Tweed?' a sleepy voice enquired. 'It's morning here – and I'm not an early riser unless I have to be.'

'Mark Wendover. What kind of a detective agency does he run in New York?'

'Corporate work. Embezzlement. Someone dipping their hand into the till. In a big way. How is Mark?'

'Thriving.'

'Is that all? Good. Thank God

Tweed took out his doodle pad, scribbled Zurcher Kredit, put a large loop round it, joined Rondel's loop to it, then Mark's. He stared at the pad for a few minutes, the non-working end of his pen in his mouth. He grunted, then went into the bathroom for his shower.

Earlier that evening, after shouting her head off at Tweed, Lisa had stormed back to her room. When she opened the door she saw an envelope had been slipped under it into the room. She took it out of the envelope, saw it was a hotel record of a phone message.

Call me urgently. Go to the main railway station to make the call. Rocco.

She left her room immediately. Leaving the hotel, she walked. Every now and again she paused, fiddled with one of her sandals as though it had picked up a stone. This gave her the chance to glance back, to check she wasn't being followed.

The station wasn't crowded when she arrived. It was Germanic, vast and with a very high roof. She went into an empty phone cubicle, called the number. A familiar voice answered.

'Lisa, would you like to make a hundred thousand marks?'

'What did you say?'

'I think you heard me. I want you to gain all the information you can from Tweed from now on. How many in his team? Where is he going? In Hamburg. Outside Hamburg? And the only person you report this information to is me…'

'Just a minute,' she said. 'Someone is trying to get in here.'

She turned round. A man she had never seen was holding a white envelope. He thrust it into her hand, said it was for her, then departed.

'You've got the envelope,' the voice on the phone commented. 'Now count the contents. I'll wait.'

She opened it. A thick sheaf of 1,000 DM banknotes. She checked. 10,000 DM. She checked again. No, 100,000 DM. In English money, roughly?30,000. She slipped the envelope inside her handbag.

'Remember, you report only to me…'