The Devil's Breath (14 page)

‘Reinhart Trumm,’ he said again. ‘Hamburg number. I’m flying there now. I’ll phone you from Fuhlsbüttel. Run a check. I need to know.’

‘Sure.’ Emery paused. ‘That it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK. Kisses from Laura. Take care now. Bye, buddy.’

Telemann gazed at the phone again, holding the receiver at arm’s-length, hearing the click as the line disconnected. Care?
Kisses? Laura?
Buddy?
He turned on his heel, picked up his shoulder-bag and hurried towards the washroom across the concourse. As he did so, he looked up at the departures board, seeing double again, the second time in five minutes. He stopped and rubbed his eyes. He looked around. Everything was doubled, like a camera lens out of true. He took a series of deep breaths, eyes closed again, forcing the air deep into his lungs, counting slowly to thirty, and when he looked round again, his sight was perfect, the images no longer dancing. Odd, he thought, making for the washroom, wondering whether he still wanted to throw up.

*

Faraday’s body stayed in the big mortuary fridge at Newbury General Hospital for an hour and a half.

The pathologist, summoned from her garden in Theale, arrived at 18.45. She read the accident report and conferred briefly with the casualty registrar. He told her that the drum of chemicals had been resealed, and the area decontaminated. Laboratory staff from the group’s Analysis Division were now en route to the waste transfer station. They would remove a number of discreet samples and return to company headquarters. A full report and analysis would be available within forty-eight hours.

The pathologist borrowed a small office beside the casualty area and telephoned the Newbury coroner. Without a formal request from the coroner’s office, she wasn’t allowed to proceed with a post-mortem. The coroner was out when she finally got through, but a clerk confirmed that so far there’d been nothing from the police on the incident, and consequently no plans for an inquest.

The pathologist put the phone down. She’d already visited the mortuary and had a look at the body. The attendants had removed Faraday’s clothes and laid his naked corpse on one of the big stainless-steel tables. As she’d expected, there was no sign of external injury, except for some superficial abrasion on the forehead where he’d been dragged away from the drum by his feet. The real story was usually internal – the secrets yielded by the body’s organs – but even here she knew she’d be lucky
to find anything conclusive. There’d be no air left in the lungs to sample, nothing in the stomach that he might have swallowed. Death would be certifiable as respiratory failure, or heart failure, or both, but these terse phrases were of minor forensic value. Whatever had killed him would have left little, if any, trace. Perhaps the fatty tissue samples might respond to gas chromatography. Perhaps, like so many youngsters, he’d taken one sniff of solvent too many. But that, in view of his job, was unlikely.

She pondered the problem a little longer, watching the attendants in the mortuary wrapping the body in shiny white plastic. The label on the side of the drum had definitely read ‘Poison’. It had been there in the reports, black and white. And the thing had been washed ashore, origin unknown, destination unknown, contents a mystery. The drum itself had evidently been a little out of the ordinary, reinforced top and bottom, heavier gauge steel than usual. She followed the attendants back into the fridge room and picked up the phone again, wondering how far to take it, whether to seek specialist advice. The number rang and rang, the switchboard busy, and after a couple of minutes she put the phone down again, glancing at her watch. There were still a couple of hours of daylight left. If she drove fast, she could be back amongst the roses by eight. The coroner would be back in his office tomorrow. Better to wait for a formal post-mortem.

*

Telemann stepped off the Lufthansa 737 at nine o’clock, Hamburg time.

The concourse at Fuhlsbüttel was nearly empty, a couple in the departures bar sipping a beer together before the late night flights took off, the odd businessman nursing a schnapps and a creased copy of
Die Zeit
. Telemann found a phone booth and used his ATT card to call Emery. It was mid-afternoon in Washington, and he was back at his desk in the office on ‘F’ Street.

Neither man wasted time with formalities. Emery had the details on a fax from Langley.

‘Trumm’s real name’s Nathan Blum,’ he said, ‘he’s a
katsa
.
He’s been in Hamburg since April. Before that he was in Copenhagen …’ He paused. ‘He’s spent time in South Africa and Buenos Aires. In fact he was there the same time as you …’ He paused again, and Telemann could hear him chuckling. ‘But the big news is Palestine. The guy used to be one of their point men on the West Bank. Speaks fluent Arabic. Took lots of scalps. So be careful, buddy. The man has a reputation.’

Telemann, memorizing the details as they spilled out of the phone, grunted. ‘That all?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Not on this phone.’

Telemann nodded and said goodbye. He picked up his bag and made his way out of the building, looking for a cab. He’d phoned the number Vlaedders had given him from Brussels. A woman had answered, and Telemann had simply given her the facts, knowing that Vlaedders would already have been on the line. The name’s Lacey, he’d said. I’m a journalist on assignment, and Mr Vlaedders suggests I talk to Herr Trumm. The woman had noted the details and promised to pass them on. Herr Trumm was in conference. She’d be able to talk to him within the hour. Herr Lacey should phone again.

Telemann stood outside the terminal building, yawning in the darkness. It was a hot night, with a fitful wind stirring the flags on a line of poles across the car park. Telemann could hear the halyards slapping against the poles.

He waited for another minute or so, then picked up his bag and began to walk slowly towards a line of cabs parked further down the terminal. Exhaustion had emptied him of everything but the simple imperatives of finding a bed and a shower, and a little peace. He’d shut his mind to Emery and Laura, and the fact that his marriage had hit the rocks. He’d done his best to erase the memory of his daughter’s voice, the words carrying clear across the Atlantic. He’d even, for now, put aside the business in hand. Nathan Blum, the Israeli, would have to wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow, with a clear head after a decent night’s sleep, he’d deal with it.

He lifted his arm to signal the nearest cab. As he did so,
another car parked in a bay across the road flashed its lights. He heard the engine start. It sounded like a diesel engine. The car began to move, pulling a tight U-turn, gliding to a halt at the kerbside. Telemann looked down. It was a Mercedes. Through the windshield, he could see two faces. One of them, behind the wheel, was a woman. She had a thin, angular face, hair pulled tightly back, a face he’d seen in a thousand magazines, the face of a model. She was looking up at him, smiling.

The passenger door opened and a man got out. He was wearing slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck. His face was dark under a mass of curly blond hair. A smile revealed a set of perfect teeth. He extended a hand. ‘Mr Lacey?’

Telemann nodded, the exhaustion gone. ‘Yeah?’

‘Reinhart Trumm. You telephoned from Brussels.’

The two men looked at each other for a moment, then Trumm opened the back door and bent for Telemann’s bag. There was no discussion, no hesitation, simply the acceptance that Telemann would get in. Telemann did so, wondering why they were bothering with the formality of cover names. They checked the flights, he thought. A simple phone call.

Trumm put Telemann’s bag in the trunk and got into the car. The woman engaged gear and eased the big Mercedes towards the airport exit. Telemann watched her from the back seat, quarter-profile, high cheek-bones, huge earrings, hair secured at the back with a knot of silk. She looked about thirty, possibly less. She smelled wonderful.

Telemann lay back against the dimpled leather. There wasn’t much he could do, and they all knew it. The next hour or so belonged to them. They’d seized the initiative. They could dictate the pace.

Telemann yawned. ‘Where are we going?’ he said.

Trumm turned round, putting his elbow on the back of the seat. He was smiling again, completely relaxed. He might have stepped out of the shower after an hour or so of tennis.

‘Hotel in town,’ he said. ‘Modest but clean.’

The Hotel Hauptstadt lay at the heart of the old city. Small, dark, undistinguished, it appeared to be empty. Telemann checked in at the desk and collected a key to a room on the
second floor. The room was small and spotless. The duvet was turned down on the single bed, and the window offered a glimpse of the docks across the river. Telemann threw his bag on to a chair and sluiced his face under the tap. In the mirror, he wondered about having a shave but decided against it. They knew he’d just flown in. They knew he’d probably been awake for a couple of days. They were ahead of the game, and five minutes with mint-fresh foam and a Gillette razor wasn’t going to change anything.

He joined them downstairs in a corner of the tiny bar. They were sitting at a table, studying a snack menu. When Telemann came in, they both got up. The Mercedes was still outside.

They drove west out of the city. The traffic and the houses thinned. Soon they were on an autobahn. Telemann, watching idly from the back-seat, saw signs for Elmshorn and Itzehoe. Twenty kilometres short of Brunsbüttel, the car slowed and left the autobahn. Apart from the occasional exchange between Blum and the woman behind the wheel, there was no conversation, no small-talk. The radio was on, the volume low, jazz classics, Quincy Jones, Stan Getz. Once or twice, curious, Telemann asked the kind of questions a visiting journalist might ask, drawing his cover around him, but the answers he got were no more than cursory, brief acknowledgements that he was riding in the car with them, a guest of sorts, and that they owed him the simple courtesy of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Beyond that, neither of them was prepared to go. Federal Express, Telemann thought as the Mercedes slowed for yet another village. Couriers sent to the airport to collect the goods.

Beyond the village, they turned left. The road narrowed, no more than a track now, deeply rutted. In the distance, across the flat landscape, Telemann could see the lights of a ship moving slowly across the fields. He frowned, trying to make sense of the image, picturing the map of the area, the plains of Schleswig-Holstein stretching north and west towards Denmark. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, wondering whether this was yet another form of double vision, but the ship was still there, the red navigation lights high on the bridge, the dark silhouette of the hull, the row of port-holes aft, crew
accommodation, softly lit from within. He hesitated, wondering whether to risk a question, realizing quite suddenly how tired he was, then he had it, the map again, the heavy blue line bisecting this neck of land, connecting the Baltic to the North Sea. The Kiel Canal, he thought. We’re right up by the Kiel Canal.

Abruptly, the car swung left, along a dirt road and into the cover of a stand of trees. The car stopped. The woman switched off the engine, and for a moment there was silence. Then Telemann picked up another noise, mechanical, a low hum. Generator, he thought.

They got out. It was cooler here, the air fresher. Overhead, the trees stirred in the wind. Telemann peered into the darkness, following the woman as she picked her way through the long grass. There were lights through the trees, the generator sounded louder, there was the smell of manure and newly mown hay. On the other side of the trees was a small cottage. Beyond the cottage, shapes in the darkness, were a number of outbuildings. Listening hard, Telemann could hear the stirring of animals.

They went into the cottage, the woman knocking three times on the door and then letting herself in with a key. Inside, blinking in the sudden light, Telemann had the sense of a recent renovation: wooden beams exposed, expensive rugs on a newly laid wooden floor, carefully framed pictures, Kandinsky and Klee, twenties’ classics. Despite the farmyard smells outside, the place belonged to someone altogether more metropolitan, someone with taste, someone who knew their way around the gentler pieces of Bauhaus. There was music, too, Brahms, the Violin Concerto.

Telemann followed the woman into the big downstairs living-room. A man in his sixties rose from an armchair in the corner. He was wearing shorts, knee-length socks and a khaki shirt. His skin was the colour of the darker stained pine panels. He had a long, deeply lined face, but his hair was still jet-black. He was lean and alert, a man with a lifetime’s practice at looking after himself. He was smoking a pipe.

Blum crossed the room and shook the man’s hand. Then he
turned to Telemann. The smile was back on his face, amused, gently sceptical, a man who had trouble remembering names. ‘Mr …?’

Telemann hesitated a moment, wondering whether to bother with the fiction any longer. These people knew. He could sense it. The games were over. There were guys in New York with gallons of nerve gas, and scores to settle, and a delicate political point to make. US troops were pouring into Saudi Arabia. Time was running out.

Telemann shook the proffered hand. ‘Telemann,’ he said briefly. ‘Ron Telemann.’

The man with the pipe studied him for a moment, still holding his hand, then he smiled. He spoke English with a heavy German accent. ‘My name’s Klausmann,’ he said slowly. ‘You may have heard of me.’

Telemann frowned, trawling his memory, looking for the index card. Klausmann, he thought. He shook his head, glancing across at Blum. The Israeli indicated an armchair beside a stack of expensive audio equipment. Telemann sank into it, still trying to place the name.

The woman appeared from the kitchen. She was carrying a tray. On it were two bottles of wine and a plateful of sandwiches. One or two of the sandwiches were beginning to curl. Telemann looked at them. They expected me earlier, he thought. An earlier flight.

The woman put the tray down and uncorked both bottles. She poured the wine. He accepted a glass and took a handful of sandwiches. They were some kind of
wurst
, thinly sliced, quite delicious. Telemann lifted his glass, a little revived, curious now, eager to see who’d make the running, which direction the conversation would take, where it might lead.