The Janus Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

first? I have a reservation at the Four Seasons …'
    `Living high?'
    `The best hotel is the last place the opposition will expect to find me. And I have an escort following in a cab. Robert Newman, the foreign correspondent.'
    Tweed produced a photo of Newman from his wallet which Kuhlmann hardly glanced at. He took a deep drag at his cigar and shook his head.
    `I'd have recognized Newman without a picture. I saw him back at the carousel. I was going to check his presence with you. If it's OK by you the first stop is the hospital where Fergusson was taken to and died. The doctor may be able to tell you something. Anyway, you're safe in Hamburg...'
    `Let's just say I'm in Hamburg.'
    The flight had still been in mid-air when the call to an apartment block in Altona, a Hamburg suburb, came through from London. The caller — from a booth inside the Leicester Square Post Office, which is actually off Charing Cross Road — spoke in German.
    `Tweed is on his way. Flight LH 041, departed Heathrow 1120 hours, arrives Hamburg 1255 your time. Have you got that?'
    `Understood. He'll be met at the airport. We have good time. Thank you for calling. Now we can have a limo waiting.'
    Martin Vollmer, who occupied the Altona apartment, broke the connection, waited a moment, then dialled a number in Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border.
    `Tweed is coming..
    The wires continued to hum through a complex communication system across North Germany. Like a tom-tom beat the same message was repeated again and again. 'Tweed is coming... Tweed is coming ... TWEED IS COMING...
    By the time the flight had crossed the European coastline and LH 041 was over the mainland the phone rang in the bedroom of Erwin Munzel at the Hotel Movenpick, Lübeck. The blond giant had sat by the instrument for over an hour. He snatched up the receiver.
    `Tweed is coming...'
    The brief conversation ended, Munzel; registered under the name of Kurt Franck, left the hotel immediately and walked on to the main part of Lübeck situated on an island encircled by the river Trave. It was a hot day, the air was torrid as he boarded a bus for Eichholz.
    Wearing jeans and a polo-necked cashmere sweater, he checked his watch as the bus left the island, drove over a bridge and headed east through a dull suburban district of four-storey apartment blocks.
    In less than ten minutes he got off at the terminus. He had reached the border with East Germany — the no-man's- land which is a death-trap. A coach-load of American tourists escorted by the usual talkative guide stood staring east with all the fascination of ghouls observing a traffic accident.
    Munzel pushed his way through to the front and gazed at the distant watch-tower. He checked his watch again and waited until it was 1.30 p.m. precisely. Then he pulled a red-coloured handkerchief from his pocket and slowly wiped the sweat off his high forehead. He repeated the gesture three times.
    Inside the watch-tower one of the three guards stared through a pair of high-powered binoculars. He felt he could reach out and touch Munzel's forehead. Putting down the binoculars on a table he reached for the phone.
    `That's Munzel reporting in,' he remarked to his companions.
    The wires began humming in the DDR — the German Democratic Republic. East Germany. Within minutes, General Lysenko, seated at a desk next to Markus Wolf in the basement of a building in the centre of Leipzig picked up the phone when it rang.
    He listened, said 'yes' or 'no' several times, then replaced the instrument. Typically, he kept the chief of East German Intelligence in suspense while he lit a cigarette fitted with a cardboard holder.
    Markus Wolf, in his sixties, sat like a graven image, his horn-rimmed glasses perched on his prominent nose. Wolf had the patience of a cat playing with a trapped mouse.
    `Tweed is coming...' Lysenko told him eventually. `So, we wait...'
    `He has taken the bait. He has arrived in Hamburg. Soon we'll hear he has