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And what a find.

It fell into place like the last piece of a puzzle, neatly explaining everything that had happened in the museum and answering half a dozen other questions besides. Three rooms in the Grand Hyatt on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz had been booked to a company called Tu Technologies, registered in Shanghai. They had been booked by the director of the company, who had signed for them in person. Tu Tian.

The outfit that Yoyo worked for.

That
was where he knew the name from!

He loaded the company homepage and found a portrait of the owner. A plump man, almost bald, with a pate like a billiard ball. All in all, so ugly that he came out the other side as rather appealing. His thick lips could make a frog turn green with envy, but they were somehow sensual at the same time. His eyes, peering out from behind a tiny pair of glasses, glowed with humour and pitiless intelligence. He radiated a Buddha-like calm and iron determination, all at once. Xin could tell at first sight that Tu Tian was a streetfighter, a jackal in jester’s clothing. Somebody he could ill afford to underestimate. If he was helping Yoyo and Jericho, that meant that they were mobile, that they could leave Berlin as quickly as they had shown up.

The Vogelaars were dead. Which meant that they
would
be leaving Berlin.

Very soon. Now.

Xin strapped on his gun. He chose a long red wig and a face-mask with a matching beard, then stuck appliqués to his forehead and cheekbones. He pulled on an emerald-green duster coat, put on a slim pair of mirrored holospecs and stopped in front of the mirror for a few seconds to check the effect. He looked like a pop star. Like a typical mando-progger, who had made more money than he’d ever had good taste.

He hurried from the hotel, flagged down a taxi and ordered it to the Grand Hyatt.

Tu’s face showed up on the screen. Jericho was hardly surprised to hear him say:

‘Get Diane packed. We’re leaving.’

‘What about the glass eye?’

Yoyo’s fingers appeared onscreen. Vogelaar’s false eye stared at him. Denuded of its eyelids, it looked somehow surprised, even a little indignant.

‘There’s no doubt that it’s a memory crystal,’ he heard her say. ‘I had a look at it, it’s the usual pattern. Hurry up. The cops will be with you shortly.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘On our way to you,’ Tu said. ‘They’ve got the car numberplate. In other words, they know that it’s a hire car, they know who rented it, they know his address, and so on and so forth. I should guess that they’ll make the connection with this morning’s unhappy events.’

‘And with your jet,’ said Jericho.

‘With my—’

‘
Fuck!
’ said Yoyo’s voice. ‘He’s right!’

‘As soon as they find out that you rented the car at the airport, they’ll twig,’ said Jericho. ‘They’ll arrest us even before we check the car back.’

‘How much time do we have?’

‘Hard to say. The first thing they’ll do is go through the passenger lists of all the flights that landed before you went to the rental desk. That will take a while. They won’t find anything, but since you must have got here somehow or other, they’ll check the private flights.’

‘It’ll take us at least half an hour to get to the airport in the Audi.’

‘That could be too late.’

‘Forget the bloody Audi,’ Yoyo called out. ‘If we’re to have any chance at all, we need a skycab.’

‘I could order one,’ Jericho suggested.

‘Do that,’ Tu agreed. ‘We’ll be at the hotel in ten minutes.’

‘Your wish is my command.’

Jericho hung up and ran out to the corridor. As he dashed towards the lifts, he could see with his mind’s eye how the efficient German police would be unravelling the puzzle of their arrival, dauntless, dutiful and assuming the worst. He went up to the roof and found the skyport empty. A liveried hotel employee beamed at him
from over the edge of his terminal. Jericho’s arrival seemed to give him a new purpose in life, stranded up here as he was on the lonely expanse of the roof.

‘Would you like to order an aircab?’ he asked.

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘One moment, please.’ He slid his fingers busily across the console. ‘I could have one here for you in ten to fifteen minutes.’

‘As quick as you can!’

‘While you’re waiting, would you like any help with your lugg—’

The sentence probably ended with –
age
, but Jericho was back in the lift. He hurried to his room and shoved Diane into his rucksack with all the hardware. He packed whatever clothing lay around on top, checked and holstered his Glock, ran along the corridor and left a note for Tu:

I’m on the flight deck
.

‘No, he’s not,’ said the voice on the telephone.

Dr Marika Voss hopped from one foot to another, while Svenja Maas stood next to her, pale and wringing her hands.

‘Malchow,’ she repeated stubbornly. ‘Hel – ge Mal – chow.’

‘As I’ve already said—’

‘My colleague called him.’

‘That may well be, but—’

‘First she was held in a queue, then one of your switchboard staff put her through. To Malchow. To Hel—’

‘There’s no such person.’

‘But—’

‘Listen,’ said the voice, growing audibly less patient as the conversation went round and round in circles. ‘I would very much like to help you, but we have nobody of that name in the whole Foreign Office! And the extension number that you gave me doesn’t exist either!’

Dr Voss pressed her lips together indignantly. She’d known as much, ever since the automated dialling system had told her that there was no such number. Despite all this, she saw no reason to back down.

‘But the woman on the switchboard—’

‘Ah yes, the switchboard.’ A short pause, a sigh. ‘And what was the woman called?’

‘What was she called?’ Dr Voss hissed.

‘Something like Schill or Schall,’ Maas whispered, hunched over, miserable.

‘Schill or Schall, my colleague says.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘We do have a Scholl. Miss Scholl.’

‘Scholl?’ asked Dr Voss.

Maas shook her head. ‘It was Schill.’

‘It was Schill.’

‘I’m sorry. No Schill, no Schall, no Malchow. I really do advise you to call the police. Clearly you’ve been the butt of a very nasty joke.’

Dr Voss gave in. She thanked the civil servant in an icy tone, then called the number for the police. At her side, Svenja Maas wilted.

Within five minutes the case officers had tracked down the numberplate. Within seconds, they knew the name of the hire firm’s client. They compared that information with the records from immigration, and learned that Tu Tian had touched down in Berlin early the day before, giving the Grand Hyatt on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz as his address.

Two minutes after that, a team was dispatched to the hotel.

Thanks to Tu’s dauntless driving, they reached the hotel sooner than they had expected, and with even more reason to get away again as quickly as they could – he must have chalked up dozens of traffic offences between the hospital at Turmstrasse and the hotel on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz. He got out, threw the keys to the concierge and asked him to take the car down to the underground parking.

‘Shall we go to the bar?’ Yoyo asked, loudly enough that the man couldn’t help but overhear it. Tu winked, understanding her plan, and picked up the charade.

‘To tell you the truth, I feel like something sweet.’

‘There’s a Starbucks in the Sony Center. Up the street.’

‘Great. See you there. I’ll just go tell Owen.’

It was vaudeville stuff of course, but it might buy them some time. They crossed
the lobby as fast as they could without arousing suspicion, went up to the seventh floor and headed for their rooms.

‘Leave everything there that you don’t need,’ Tu called to her. ‘Bring only the bare essentials.’

‘Easy enough,’ Yoyo snorted. ‘I don’t have anything! You look after yourself, don’t waste time fussing with your suitcase.’

‘I don’t care about fashion, me.’

‘True enough, we’ll have to work on that. See you on the flight deck in two minutes.’

* * *

Seven floors below, Xin jumped out of the taxi. By now he knew what floor they were on, what room numbers, the only thing he didn’t know was who had which room. All the rooms were booked to Tu Technologies, and neither Yoyo nor Jericho were mentioned by name. He walked into the lobby in his full battledress. Hyatt staff and guests would certainly remember who had walked in at 15.30: a tall man, a striking figure with a flowing mane of red hair and a Genghis Khan moustache, probably some sort of artsy type. Holospecs hid the Asiatic cast of his eyes. He could easily be taken for European. The best disguise was to make yourself noticed.

He walked into a lift and pressed for the seventh floor.

Nothing happened.

Xin frowned, then spotted the thumbscan plate. Of course. The lift worked on authorisation only, as in most international hotels. He trotted obediently back into the lobby, where a contingent of his fellow-countrymen was just making their way to the reception desk. There was a sudden throng. The staff at the desk steeled themselves for the task of making sense of the new arrivals’ broken English, riddling out what they meant from what they said, and adding to the rich confusion with their own small store of Chinese words. Xin headed purposefully to the only receptionist who was busy with other tasks, in this case the telephone. He drew himself up to his full height and then wondered what on earth he could ask her.

How do I get up to the seventh floor?

Would you like to check in? – No, I have some friends staying here and I wanted to drop in on them. I can authorise you and then call them for you, to let them know you’re coming. Ahh, you know how it is, actually I wanted to surprise them. I understand! If you wait just a moment, I’ll ride up with you. It’s all a bit busy at the moment, as you see, but in a few minutes’ time … Can’t we be a bit quicker? – Well, you see, I’m not really supposed to – it’s really just guests who can—

Xin turned away. The whole thing was too complicated. He didn’t want to leave
his thumbprint in the Hyatt’s system, any more than he wanted to risk Tu, Jericho or Yoyo being warned. He mingled in with the other Chinese.

* * *

Jericho saw the skycab lift over the Tiergarten park and make for the Hyatt, a muscular-looking VTOL with four turbines. It came in fast, dipped its jets with a hissing snarl and sank slowly down onto the landing pad.

‘Your taxi’s here,’ the hotel employee said, smiling, the joy in his voice announcing how wonderful it was that air transport was so widely available these days, and what a pleasure it was to see people use it.

In the next moment Yoyo hurried from the terminal, a crumpled shopping bag under her arm and Tu trotting in her wake. He was pulling his suitcase along behind him as though it were a recalcitrant child.

The taxi settled.

‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ Tu beamed.

‘Just what the
detective
ordered,’ Jericho reminded him amiably.

‘Enough strutting and preening, you two.’ Yoyo headed for the boarding hatch. ‘Is your jet cleared for take-off?’

It was as though her question had slammed on the brakes in Tu’s stride. He stopped, fumbled at the bare expanse of his scalp and tried to twist his fingers into the tiny short hairs there.

‘What is it?’

‘I forgot something,’ he said.

‘Say it’s not so.’ Yoyo stared at him.

‘It is. My phone. I just now thought, all I need to do is call the airport from the taxi, and then I realised—’

‘You have to go back to your room?’

‘Erm – yes.’ Tu left his suitcase where it was, turned around and hurried back to the lift. ‘I’ll be right back. Right back.’

* * *

When Xin heard that the elderly Chinese couple in front of him intended to book one of the Grand Hyatt’s finest and most expensive suites, he felt a warm glow of pleasure. Not because of any sudden spasm of altruism, but because the suite was on the seventh floor. Right where he wanted to be.

The husband put his thumb on the scanplate. A young receptionist offered to show the couple up to their room, and they strolled across to the lift together. Xin fell in behind them. As they stood there waiting for the lift, the wife turned to look at him, her curiosity as strong as an elastic band tugging her head around. She looked in bemusement at the tumble of hair over his shoulders, and in bafflement at his holospecs. She
eyed the toes of his snakeskin boots dubiously, visibly nervous at the thought of having to share a hotel with the likes of him. Her husband stuck to her side, short and stocky, and stared at the gap where the lift doors met until they opened. They went into the lift together. Nobody asked whether he was with the group. The young receptionist smiled warmly at him, and he smiled back, just as warmly.

‘Seventh floor as well?’ she asked, in English just to be on the safe side.

‘Yes, please,’ he said.

Next to him, the Chinese woman stiffened, horribly sure now that he was living on the same floor.

* * *

Tu tore back the bedclothes but his phone wasn’t there, any more than it had been on the desk or on either of the night-stands. He rummaged through sheets, flung pillows aside, grabbed fistfuls of linen and damask, slid his fingers in between the mattress and the frame.

Nothing.

Who had he called last? Who had he been meaning to call?

The airport. At least, he had wanted to, but then he had decided to call later. He had even had the thing in his hand.

And he’d put it down.

He swept his eyes over the desk again, the chairs, armchair, carpeting. Incredible, he was getting old! What had he been doing just before? He saw himself standing there, his phone in his right hand, while there was something in his left hand too, something just below waist height—

Aha, of course!

* * *

Seventh floor.

The Chinese wife pushed herself brusquely past the young receptionist to get out of the lift, as though she feared that Xin might bite her at the last moment. Her husband, though, had a sudden access of Western etiquette, and took a step back to let the young woman go first, smiling broadly at her. Xin waited until the group was out of sight. The hotel corridors stretched around a sunny atrium space, four sides of a square, with the guest rooms along the front edges. He looked at the wall map. He was glad to see the receptionist and the Chinese couple had set off in the opposite direction from the rooms which Tu had taken.