Prime Target (21 page)

‘I'll drop that one back in Philpott's lap.'

‘Good. Now I think I'll hang up, C.W. Suddenly I'm getting sleepy.'

‘Don't you want to know what Sabrina found out about the Arab shooter?'

‘Another time. If I miss my sleep on this cycle, I may have to wait twelve hours before I'm ready again.'

Sabrina was in the pale blue kitchen of her apartment on East 93rd Street, standing at the big butcher's-block counter that divided the room. She had made coffee and was pouring it into a dark green porcelain cup.

‘This sensation is not loneliness,' she told herself firmly, ‘I'm just out of time-whack.'

She had been feeling like this since she got back from Morocco. The expected pleasure of returning
to her own home had not crystallized. She had the distinct feeling, at that very moment, that all of life was happening elsewhere, and she had somehow landed in a pocket of limbo.

She took her coffee to the couch and sat down. She picked up the TV remote and switched on the set. As soon as the picture appeared she began clicking. Women, she had read, were not so prone to channel-hopping as men. Sabrina could hop with the best of them.

None of the images that flashed past appealed strongly enough to make her want to stop and watch. She switched off the set and sat back, inhaling the aroma of the coffee, staring at the dark night sky beyond her windows.

She tried to imagine how different her life would be if she had gone into teaching. She had wanted to teach, once, but opportunity was a powerful side-tracker. After some postgraduate time at the Sorbonne she travelled in Europe for a couple of years, and on her return to the USA she was recruited by the FBI. That had something to do with her father: George Carver was a man with a lifelong career in politics (‘… in the machinery of political life,' was how he described his work) who had perhaps wanted a son. Sabrina took the job because it smacked of adventure, something she felt her life might need now she had decided to come home. While she was at the FBI she discovered she had a talent with firearms. She also learned she was good at
martial arts. Gradually the thoughts of a life in teaching were submerged. By the time she was gently head-hunted and won over by UNACO, Sabrina was decidedly a woman of action, with a robust, well-preserved spare-time passion for languages and European literature. Now, the thought of tenure at a small, picturesque campus seemed very attractive.

She drained her cup and took it back to the kitchen. She washed up, put out the lights and went to the bedroom. Now that she faced it, she felt desperately tired. Her shoulders ached and her legs still felt sluggish, a hangover from the time she spent cramped and dehydrated in the stinking room in Morocco. Sleep and rest for her poor muscles, she thought, would put a whole new shine on her outlook.

She sat on the side of the bed and smiled at the picture of her mother and father on the night table. George and Jeanne Carver lived in Florida now, she hardly ever saw them since George retired. Occasionally they would come and stay for a few days, so Jeanne could have an opportunity to see the shows and George could mingle with his old friends for a while. But they didn't come often enough, and when they did they always believed they were intruding on her life.

‘If only you would,' she told the picture.

What she felt now was a familiar sensation she privately called her amputee state: not belonging with anyone and not wanting to belong, but feeling cut
off nevertheless. Or it was simpler than that: she was merely sorry for herself.

‘Self-pity is a crime against your person,' she said firmly, and stood up. ‘Snap out of it.'

All the same, she found it hard not to feel melancholy as she got undressed and put on her nightdress. Emotionally, she made a habit of keeping the wick turned low. Early in her career at the FBI she had had an affair with a sub-controller who turned ugly when she showed signs of falling in love with him. In the end he set his wife on her. Nowadays, beyond superficial friendship, she was wary of men, and she made a point of avoiding the ones who were not entirely free from other attachments - which was difficult to do, because they always said they were.

The telephone rang. She picked it up.

‘Sabrina,' Whitlock said. ‘I hope I didn't wake you.'

‘Nice try, C.W., but no. You should have waited another twenty minutes.'

‘You know I wouldn't call at this hour unless it was important.' Sabrina's other line started ringing, then the fax machine cut in. ‘I can hear that,' Whitlock said. ‘It's from me. A summary of what Mike found out when he visited Erika Stramm's apartment. Read and digest.'

‘Why am I getting all this attention so late at night?'

‘Because there's a problem. It needs handling
and Philpott thinks you're the very person to do the job.'

‘Tell me,' she said.

‘Erika's response to Mike's break-in was hostile.'

‘No kidding. Are you saying she caught him?'

‘Apparently. Anyway, Mike did manage to purloin a computer file with the stuff I've just faxed to you, but there's a crucial gap in the information.'

‘And crucial gaps are my specialty.'

‘We don't know who the killer is, the executioner, the one who's behind two murders that we know of. As things stand between Mike and Erika Stramm, there's not a chance she'll tell him anything.'

‘But you believe she'll tell me?'

‘Well the chief thinks so.' Whitlock paused. ‘And yes, I think so, too. I've always admired your, how shall I put it, delicate powers of persuasion.'

Sabrina took a moment to consider what he had said, then asked simply, ‘When do I get the travel details?'

‘You have them already. They're at the end of the fax. Keep in touch. And be careful.'

‘Sure. You too.'

Sabrina put down the phone. She smiled again at the picture of her parents. It was odd the way events worked on her moods. She had just been told she had to get out there and risk her neck again. Because of that, she no longer felt cut off from anything.

Russ Grundy, stout and ruddy-featured, was squeezed into a corner in the back of a big white van with
BENTINCK'S WINDSHIELD REPLACEMENTS
painted in blue on the side. It was parked in the street behind the offices of the Transit Authority building in downtown Fort Worth, next to the bus station.

‘It's busy along here, which is good cover, and the traffic doesn't affect the equipment,' Russ told C.W. Whitlock. ‘I'm within a mile of Chadwick's house, which is perfect, and if I need to move closer for any reason nobody is going to notice or care.'

Whitlock had arrived by bus, which he believed was still the best way to travel when a low profile was important. He had entered the van by walking through the bus station from front to back and climbing in as if he owned the vehicle. He sat now on a tiny swivel stool at the opposite end of the van from Grundy. Both sides of the interior were packed with electronic equipment. Where Grundy
sat was a small bench with tuning gear, speakers, tape machines and headphones.

‘I'm really grateful to you and Mr Philpott for this little diversion, C.W.'

‘Glad we can all help each other. How are you working this surveillance, exactly?'

‘Most of it's way beyond you - no offence - but putting it simply, I'm aligned with a tight information band set up between this van and the target. The ventilators out on the roof are my focusing receivers. This baby,' he patted an oblong black-and-red box beside him, ‘collects and co-ordinates. It picks up from two bugs in Chadwick's house, and a third one in his office, another mile out beyond the house. So far, he hasn't been near the office.'

‘How did you get the bugs in place?'

‘Respect my secrets, C.W., and that way I'll respect yours.'

‘You remembered it's telephone calls we're interested in?'

‘Of course I did. So that we don't have to record every sound that gets made in the place every minute of the day, the recording equipment is triggered by the first dialling tone each time a call is made, and it switches off again when the line-cancel tone sounds. This is
really
sensitive equipment, C.W.'

‘Can you tell what numbers are being called?'

Grundy put on a pitying face. ‘I could do that before any of this stuff was invented. Some guys
can do it just by listening near the phone. The tones tell you the country and area codes, and the numbers. They get logged separately.' He pointed to a cassette deck. ‘Chadwick's dialled quite a few in the last, ah…' he looked at his watch, ‘nine hours.'

‘Can you transcribe them for me?'

‘Sure. This thing makes a printout.' Grundy flipped a switch on the front panel. A moment later a strip of cash-register paper began to appear from under the machine. ‘How long have you got, C.W.?'

‘I get a return trip on the same bus I came in on. A couple of hours yet.'

‘You'll have time to listen to some of this.' Grundy put a small DAT tape player in front of Whitlock and inserted a tape. ‘Plug in the headphones at the side.'

Whitlock listened. For a time it was fascinating, hearing Chadwick in his own home, believing he was alone, talking business on the telephone. But it was dull stuff, business talk of a kind that conveyed nothing beyond its own narrow content. After twenty minutes Whitlock decided he would switch off, make his apologies and leave with the tape player and the other three tapes. Then the tape suddenly began to hiss and squeak. He put the machine on pause and pulled off the headphones.

‘It's gone strange,' he told Grundy.

‘Let me listen.'

Grundy squeezed his way along the van, wedging himself in beside Whitlock. He put on the headphones, activated the tape and sat frowning. Then he paused the tape again.

‘Son of a gun,' he said. ‘He's masking the call.'

‘Masking it?'

‘The old-fashioned way. Running water. He probably took the phone into the bathroom and turned on the taps.'

‘You think he knows about the bugs?'

‘No. He's just leery, like every sharp crook that ever was. They don't trust their own shadows.'

‘So we don't get to know why he thought this call important enough to screen?'

‘Who says?'

Grundy removed the tape from the player and took it to the other end of the van. He put it into an elaborate-looking cassette deck with six circular dials above the tape compartment. He rewound a few inches of tape, played it, and made adjustments to scales underneath the dials.

‘I'm screening out the frequency of running water, which should leave only the voice sounds.'

He rewound the tape again, adjusted three of the six scales, and switched on. The tape went through the machine silently.

‘Why can't we hear anything?' Whitlock said.

‘I'm in scouring mode. You'll hear it in a minute. The rig knows now what to listen for, so it'll stop the tape automatically at the end of the overlay sound.'

After a timed three minutes and forty seconds the tape stopped. Grundy rewound it to the point where the hissing noise had started.

‘Now listen to the difference.'

He switched on. Music poured from the speaker. It was an instrumental of ‘Fool on the Hill'.

Grundy slapped his forehead.

‘He used music, too?' Whitlock said.

‘Yep. This Chadwick isn't your average paranoiac, C.W. He's up there with the wild-eyed conspiracy-theory crowd.'

‘Can you eliminate the music?'

‘Yes,' Grundy said.

Whitlock looked at him. ‘But?'

‘But the speech could disappear with it. It depends how much variance there is between Chadwick's voice and the notes and harmonic combinations that make up the music.' Grundy looked at his watch. ‘This could be a long job, without any guarantee of success.'

‘How long?'

‘Well, with music I have to do things manually, grading out the music by fine stages until I get down to the vocal range. And I'll have to work from copies, because the technique rules out error-free procedure. Two hours, maybe.'

Whitlock sighed. ‘OK. Go ahead. I'll wait.'

‘Remember, no guarantees. I may come up with nothing.'

‘We'll get nothing unless you try.'

That evening Whitlock called Philpott on the scrambler line. He explained about the masked recording.

‘It took two and a half hours to clear off the music.'

‘What did it leave?'

‘Chadwick calling an architect in Berlin. Viktor Kretzer.'

‘Really? Kretzer's on Emily's list.'

‘I know. We have a clear recording of Chadwick telling Kretzer not to communicate until further notice.'

‘Marvellous.'

‘But better still,' Whitlock said, ‘we have a little nugget at the end of the call. Chadwick tells Kretzer that some armaments are due to complete the round trip and come back to Germany, where they were born. The consignment is one item short of the batch Mr Gibson originally purchased, he says, because the Arab was given the gun to use on the job in London. How's that for serendipity?'

‘To quote the psalmist,' Philpott said, ‘my cup runneth over. You realize that apart from this being Grade A evidence, it means I won't have to do any blind bluffing with Chadwick and Pearce?'

‘Of course.'

‘I'll pass on my thanks to Grundy in person. Meantime I've skulduggery to get on with. And, indeed, so have you.' He laughed softly. ‘Don't you just love it, C.W., when fate takes its foot off your neck and lets you score the occasional goal?'

Chadwick had reserved a table at the Casa de Oro at Fairmont in North-west Dallas. When Philpott arrived, Chadwick and Pearce were already seated. He saw them watch him as he came across the blue-and-amber-lit dining room. There was tension in the way they sat, square-shouldered, necks stiff.