The Hidden Target Read Online Free PDF Page A

Direct Action. When I first joined—”
    “I remember.”
    “That manifesto you and Marco wrote—do you still believe all you declared in it? Destroy to build. The insurrectionary act is the best propaganda.”
    Suddenly, he was alert. Was this how she had edged Marco into his talk about absolute freedom? And get the quotations right, he told her silently. He curbed his irritation, laughed, made his own small attack. “Don’t knock that manifesto. It brought you running to join us.” He looked around him with interest. “Piccadilly, I see. Now I’m beginning to know where I am.”
    “You always do, Erik,” she said very quietly. She drew an envelope from her pocket. “Here’s a ticket for the concert at Wigmore Hall tonight. I was supposed to be going there—with O’Connell and Westerman. I’ll let them know I can’t manage it, that I’m turning in the ticket at the box office. It won’t be a good seat—students’ rates—but you’ll be sitting beside them. And then it’s up to you. By the way, if you want to attend that lecture on the English novel, it’s tomorrow morning. University College. Eleven o’clock.” She was eyeing the traffic ahead of them. “I’ll drop you near Fortnum & Mason’s—that’s close enough to Regent Street,” she decided. She selected a vacant slot near the kerb and drew up. He was as quick as she was: he had the door open as he reached for his bag. “If you need help,” she said, “you know the telephone service that will take your message. I check with them each morning. But where can I reach you?”
    “At that number. Same procedure. And thanks, Greta. Many thanks.”
    A nod for goodbye and she was driving off. He went searching for a taxi, resisted hailing one that was just passing. Greta might have seen him enter it, and followed out of sheer curiosity. She had plenty of that. Which made her a damned good undercover agent. Certainly she had done a superlative job on O’Connell and Westerman.
    Five minutes of loitering and he found a taxi, directed it to a small hotel off Russell Square. It had been carefully chosen: the Women’s Residence was nearby; University College, in Gower Street, was not much further away. As for this evening, with the concert ticket in his pocket and English pounds in his wallet, he was equally well prepared. Wigmore Street was easily reached. No problem at all. But what would he have to sit through in Wigmore Hall? He had no interest in music whatsoever. Just grin and bear it, he told himself, and opened the International Herald Tribune at page three.
    It contained a news item from Essen, headed CAPTURE OF FOUR TERRORISTS . Two men arrested in an apartment on Friederikenstrasse; two women taken into custody on their return to the building. Arms and sophisticated radio equipment discovered, along with maps and documents. One of the women, known only as “Amalie,” had collapsed with severe chest pains and was taken to the prison hospital. The real names of all four terrorists were yet uncertain, but Berlin police were hopeful of identifying them. They were thought to belong to a terrorist organisation known as the People’s Revolutionary Force for Direct Action, which had been responsible for at least four major bomb explosions (five dead, thirty-seven injured) and three assassinations in the last two years. Their activities had centred around West Berlin and Frankfurt. Their main objective in the Essen area seemed to be the storage tanks in Duisburg. Thanks to the vigilance of the police... “Et cetera, et cetera,” said James Kiley. So Amalie had chosen a hospital room for her means of escape. All very neatly arranged.
    But not so neatly, he discovered as he saw a small paragraph, a later report. Amalie’s body had been found in her heavily guarded hospital room. Death seemed from natural causes.
    Seemed... Theo’s ways and means were highly efficient. And just as Kiley was relaxing, scanning the rest of the page, he found a