The Lucifer Network (42 page)

Sam scratched his head. This was a different scenario and not implausible. ‘So what are the military doing about it?'

‘The MoD is sending in the SBS to take a look.'

‘When?'

‘Tonight.'

Sam looked at his watch. ‘There's something else you ought to know. Schenk's wife is Croatian.'

‘Is she now . . .?' There was a prolonged silence again. Then the sound of a deep sigh. ‘You know, the trouble with “booties” is that they have a one-track mind,' Waddell mused, as if talking to himself. ‘They'll be looking for whatever their military guvnors tell them to look for and nothing else.'

‘Yes.' Sam's pulse was beginning to race.

‘So from our point of view I think it might be wise if we sent someone with them. Someone who knew this Jackman case inside out. A bloke with his mind set on proving once and for all whether our little theories have any substance. Don't you think, Sam?'

‘I couldn't agree more, Duncan.'

Another pause. Sam needed Waddell to come out with the idea that was in both their minds. As much as anything else in order to show that despite the PR disasters of the past week he was still on the team.

Waddell cleared his throat. ‘Ever jumped out of an aeroplane, Sam?'

London

11.40 hrs

Rob Petrie left his ancient Ford Escort in a residential turning off the main north London shopping street of Golders Green Road. Slipping on the sunglasses and baseball cap which he'd worn in Southall, he walked past suburban houses until he reached the shops. In his right hand was the Tesco bag containing the second instalment of his contribution to the Lucifer Network's campaign for ethnic purity. It would be a day earlier than Peter had wanted, but circumstances dictated it.

When he'd come here two days ago to choose his target, being amongst these people had made his skin crawl and it was doing so again today. The sinister men with black felt hats and stringy beards, the dark eyed, ringleted children, the rectangular foreign script in the windows of the shops: he'd stepped into an alien culture which sat like a cancer in his own land, an inward-looking community that was a part of the great Zionist conspiracy. These were the faces of ZOG.

The door to a hairdresser's opened in front of him and a man stepped out dressed in a long, black satin frock-coat, the crown of his newly trimmed head covered by a skull-cap. He pulled up the aerial on a mobile phone and punched in a number as he hurried down the street. Petrie shivered with loathing.

The first thing he'd looked for on his recce on Wednesday were the video cameras the police had mounted on tall masts all over the capital. He'd seen two in the High Street up towards the tube and bus station, but down this end where the kosher delicatessens were, none was visible. Rob Petrie wore dark trousers
and a light blue sports shirt. He kept his head low as he moved towards the target, the peak of the baseball cap pulled firmly down. He paused by the kerb to let a delivery van go past, then crossed the road towards a bagel bakery and a small shop called Treasures of Jerusalem, its windows full of Menorahs. The shopping centre was drab, a line of between-wars, redbrick commercial developments with flats above. A trading site that had been deprived of business in recent years by nearby shopping malls.

He slowed his pace to avoid attention. He was almost there. He glanced up at the sign – Segal's Kosher Restaurant. He'd noticed on Wednesday the first floor level had been popular at lunchtime, the tables by the windows the first to be occupied. Outside on the pavement was a rubbish bin lined with green plastic, five metres from the windows whose splinters would slice through the diners when the bomb went off.

Petrie faltered. Suddenly his nerve went. He felt a thousand eyes on him.

He marched on, needing to distance himself from the scene of his forthcoming act of war. The line of shops and restaurants ended at a public library. Outside it was a bench. Petrie sat on it, wedged the carrier bag between his feet and pulled out a newspaper. He pressed his ankles against the hard metal of the biscuit tin containing the killing device.

He stared at the tabloid's headlines, seeing them but not reading. He was conscious of a crocodile of primary school children chattering past, being ushered into the library by a pair of watchful teachers. He glanced up at their faces.

‘Now remember to speak softly when inside, children,' he heard one of the teachers say. ‘Libraries are places where people go for a bit of quiet.'

A quiet that would soon be shattered by his bomb. He looked at his watch. Five past twelve. The timer was set to detonate at a quarter to one. Although he had faith in the technology, having the device between his legs was making him uncomfortable.

His stomach fizzed and bubbled like a sulphur spring. If he didn't get it over with quickly he would shit himself. He stood up, stuffed the newspaper loosely into the top of the bag to make it look like rubbish, then walked back along the pavement and dumped it in the bin outside Segal's.

As he made his way back to his car he murmured. ‘Enjoy your meal, Yids.'

Vienna

Before Sam left the Embassy, Collins got a positive response from the Austrian Security Police. Max Schenk would be interviewed as soon as he could be contacted, if he agreed to it.

‘They say our suspicions are nowhere near strong enough to justify an arrest,' Collins explained.

‘A mistake, in my view,' Sam muttered, his gut instinct telling him that Schenk needed to be detained as soon as possible, in a cell with thick iron bars. ‘But it's better than nothing.'

He shook hands with Collins, leaving him with the task of finding out if the family of Schenk's wife happened to own a small island in the Adriatic.

He'd booked a seat on a 13.30 flight. A taxi took him to the Pension Kleist to collect his belongings. As he
was stuffing his clothes into the suitcase, he suddenly remembered his promise to Fischer, the German intelligence officer who'd briefed him when he'd arrived. He picked up the phone and persuaded him to drive him to the airport so they could talk.

In the heat of the last twenty hours, he'd had no time to check on Günther Hoffmann's state of health. The old spy's heart attack was the first thing he mentioned when Fischer picked him up. The German expressed surprise.

‘It is the first I hear. It must have been a false warning,' he suggested, cutting through a side street to join the main route out to the airport. ‘Because I saw Herr Hoffmann yesterday afternoon and there was nothing wrong with him.'

‘Really?' Sam was nonplussed. ‘He contacted you?'

‘Yes.'

‘May I ask why?'

Fischer looked uncomfortable. ‘He felt it advisable to report to me your visit.'

Sam bristled. ‘Why, for God's sake?'

‘Because of the murder of Vladimir Kovalenko,' Fischer continued stiffly. ‘He said you had been asking for his help to find him.'

Sam stared through the windscreen. A tram was blocking the road in front of them.

‘And he showed me an article in a British newspaper which linked your name with a situation in Africa,' Fischer went on, clearing his throat.

‘The old bastard,' Sam grated. ‘Don't tell me he actually suggested that
I'd
taken out Kovalenko?'

‘He didn't exactly say it . . .'

‘But it was the gist of his message.'

Fischer nodded.

Sam was flabbergasted. Why go to the trouble of sowing suspicion about him?

‘For the record, my friend, my aim was to question Kovalenko, not kill him. I wasn't involved in his death or that of Harry Jackman in Zambia.'

‘I am pleased to hear this.' The tension seemed to slip from the BfV man's shoulders. ‘And your discussions with Herr Hoffmann?'

Sam described his meeting at the cemetery and their subsequent conversations.

When he'd finished, Fischer clucked his tongue. ‘It is odd that Herr Hoffmann did not tell me his wife had died.'

‘I get the feeling he's quite selective about what he does tell you,' Sam commented.

‘Yes.' Fischer reflected. He pursed his lips for a moment before continuing. ‘Oh, there is some more information about his career in the Stasi which came to me yesterday. It might interest you. You understand it has been a slow process to uncover the full story of the former GDR's state security activities.'

‘Too many people with too much to lose.'

‘Of course. But we have recently learned that for two years in the middle 1980s Herr Hoffmann was in control of the Stasi section which monitored Austria. The Czechs let the Stasi have a listening post in Bratislava. As you know, it is just across the border from Austria, only fifty kilometres from Vienna. From Bratislava they monitored the telephones of 270 Austrian politicians and businessmen.'

‘No wonder he knew how to jump the housing list,' Sam remarked.

‘Yes . . .' Fischer paused reflectively. The car turned off the autobahn onto the airport approach road. ‘And because of this information I think it may be very possible that Herr Hoffmann has been more active in Vienna than I told you when we first met, Herr Packer,' he added with a degree of discomfort.

They pulled up outside the terminal. Sam thanked the German and ran inside, making the check-in just as they were closing the flight.

Was it spite, he wondered as he marched briskly to the gate? Hoffmann spreading suspicions about him as some sort of revenge for Sam uncovering his relationship with his father?

Later, as the plane taxied to the end of the runway, he opened the newspaper he'd picked up when he boarded. The story in the bottom right-hand corner leapt off the page at him.

DEATH OF A SCOTTISH MATA HARI
.

With a heavy heart he began to read.

Sam put the paper down and stared at the ceiling. So now it was official. His father had
not
betrayed his country. To see it there in black and white had come as a relief. But he felt sad for Jo Macdonald who'd hoped to die in obscurity. If it hadn't been for him digging up the past she'd have kept her shameful secret to the end.

North London

Inside the children's reading corner at Golders Green Public Library the two young teachers bustled round their brood, urging them to replace their books neatly on the shelves. It was time to get back. The children's lunchboxes were waiting for them in the classroom, lined up like soldiers along the back wall.

‘Come along now.' The young teacher had fair hair tied into an old-fashioned ponytail and wore a red pullover above blue jeans. Her companion was darker haired and broad hipped.

They trooped out of the library and turned left.

‘Keep away from the kerb, children,' the plumper teacher ordered, bringing up the rear of the crocodile. ‘No straggling. Keep up with the ones in front.'

They were a tightly bunched little group as they passed Segal's. The blast from the wastebin bomb lifted most of the tiny bodies completely off their feet. A good half-dozen of them were fired like soft bullets through the plate glass windows of the restaurant.

It was mid-afternoon when Rob Petrie closed the garage door with the Escort safely inside. He'd been sick a couple of times after hearing the report on the radio, throwing up into a spare shopping bag lying on the floor at the back of the car. According to an ambulance service spokesman, one of the little girls from St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School had been sliced in two by a jagged shard of glass. The children had taken the full force of the blast, cushioning its effects on the diners. The Jews he'd intended to kill had sustained cuts and shock, but eight of the children were dead.

He carried his bag of sick to the rubbish skips behind the lift shafts. He needed to hide. To bury his head and pretend it hadn't happened. How he could face Sandra he didn't know, but home was the only place he could go.

He pressed for the lift and waited. He'd told himself that in a war, accidents happened. That you had to turn your back and move on. But he'd seen those kids. Remembered their faces as they walked into the library. Eight little lives snuffed out.

He'd had his war now. He knew he couldn't go through this again. It would be down to others to take up the fight.

The lift came. As he raised his finger to the button he heard a shout, then running feet. His heart began to race but it was only a kid wanting him to hold the door. A black girl, fourteen, fifteen. White teeth, big lips, woven hair, wearing the navy skirt and sweatshirt of a school uniform. She lugged a small rucksack, heavy with books.

‘Thanks, mister,' she whispered, fingering the button for the sixth.

Petrie pressed himself back against the wall and held his breath. A week ago he might have imagined the kid naked and spread out for him, bound with ropes, but today she was something to fear. She was a part of the enemy that would want its revenge.

‘Thanks, mister,' she repeated as she stepped out.

On his own landing, the sound of children's voices wafted up from the playground below. He clutched the rail and gagged again, but there was nothing left to come up. Recovering, he reached his door, put his key in the lock and turned it.

As he stepped across the threshold he sensed all was not well. The door to the living room was closed, which it
never was. Very quietly he shut the front door behind him, listening.