Prime Target (7 page)

‘Sabrina?'

Sabrina explained how she got into Emily Selby's hotel room, and what she found during her search. ‘For a tourist Emily carried a lot of stuff, but the key and the list were the only items out of the ordinary. The key wouldn't be half so interesting if it hadn't been stitched into her jacket.'

‘What impressions did you get about the woman herself?' Philpott asked.

‘Tidy and well organized, though perhaps to
a pathological extent.' Sabrina explained about the piece of ruler she had found, and about clothes stored by colour, bottles in the bathroom regimented by size. ‘The kind of clothes she wore indicated she had good fashion sense, but she was also reticent, modest probably, because she had what I call an extravagance-shut-off. She had limits and barriers, she showed flair but with enough of a conservative streak to stop herself from being flamboyant.'

‘Overall impression?' Philpott said.

‘That she was intelligent, gifted and inquisitive, with a tragedy at the centre of her life, supported by the evidence of her compulsive neurosis,' Sabrina said. ‘Compulsive rituals, notably in the behaviour patterns of intelligent people, indicate that they use rigid and complicated routines to divert their minds from areas of pain.'

C.W. was nodding. So was Lucy.

‘Emily Selby's history supports that interpretation,' Sabrina went on. ‘Her employment record, which I read as soon as I got here this morning, shows she was widowed three years ago. She suffered a compound tragedy, because her husband and father died at the same time and in the same place.'

Philpott tapped the photocopy in front of him. ‘Lake Cayuga, Ithaca, New York State,' he said. ‘A fishing accident. Verdict of drowning on both men. We will look into the details. Now, Sabrina, did
you find anything at all to link Emily Selby with Erika Stramm, the woman with her in the picture?'

‘I'm assuming the pencilled initials ES at the bottom of the list stand for Erika Stramm. But that's all I have. I'm still working on a connection.'

Philpott looked at Whitlock. ‘Tell us how you fared with the list.'

Whitlock had his folder open, the sheets of information spread out before him. ‘It's a list of thirty German names and addresses, and all the names are male,' he said. ‘I sifted the criminal records first, but there was nothing. Whatever else they are, these are law-abiding citizens. Then I had to go the slow route, with the help of Interpol. Everybody was very helpful, and eventually I got expansion -as much as is known - on every name on the list.'

‘What's their connection?' Mike said.

‘Nothing worthy of the name. They don't appear to be related by blood or commercial ties. They're apparently prospering in various quiet ways, but that's all they seem to have in common. Well, except for one factor. We know that fifteen of the men on the list were adopted. They were war orphans.'

‘And the others?' Philpott said.

‘No childhood records extant. Destroyed by enemy action. The bombing of Dresden and Berlin and countless other communities wiped out millions of official histories. It simultaneously provided a blank slate for the creation of others.' C.W. spread his hands. ‘About two-thirds of the population records
collated in Germany during the immediate post-war years are just not reliable, from an investigative standpoint.'

‘What's the men's professional range?' Sabrina asked.

‘Everything from bookbinding and carpet-tile manufacture to medicine and law - there are two doctors and two lawyers - the rest are one-offs. Interpol tried a few test searches with the records of marriages but no links showed up.'

Mike asked if they were all about the same age.

‘It's tight, between fifty-nine and sixty-five years old.'

‘I think there might be something in the fact there are so many orphans,' Sabrina said. She saw Mike shake his head. ‘At least I won't close my mind to the possibility,' she added, giving it an edge.

‘And in the meantime,' Philpott said, ‘I won't make any wild guesses about the significance of this list. However…' He pushed forward a copy of the list and pointed to a name halfway down the page. ‘I'm concerned that this man's name appears on it.'

The others turned their heads to peer at the list.

‘His name is Andreas Wolff. He's an Austrian computer systems engineer and program designer.'

‘I can see his face now,' Mike said.

The others looked at him.

‘Youthful middle-aged, short salt-and-pepper haircut, steel-framed glasses and a great smile.'

Philpott nodded slowly. ‘What are you trying to tell us, Michael?'

‘His picture's on the boxes of a very expensive series of computer games. They're on sale all over the place.'

‘Mike spends a lot of time in toy shops,' Sabrina said.

‘This guy is a king of contemporary games design. He specializes in hybrids: dungeons and dragons, arcade stuff and straight crime detection rolled into one. It must be a great formula, the games sell fast and they ain't cheap.'

‘Andreas Wolff is certainly well known for his recreational software,' Philpott said dryly. ‘However, in security and law-enforcement circles, which is to say
serious
circles, he's also an eminent individual. He created the software that protects all the data carried by ICON.'

ICON - the International Criminal Observation Network - was the main criminal intelligence service in the West. Criminal records, fingerprint files,
modus operandi
profiles and databases, plus details of hundreds of current and impending police operations were carried and interchanged on the ICON network. With appropriate clearance and the necessary keyboard skills, an operator could call up the details of virtually any crime, any criminal or any current police record in a matter of seconds.

‘The man on the list is definitely the same Andreas Wolff?' Sabrina said.

The address is the same,' Philpott said, ‘and I see from C.W.'s information that the age is right, too. Wolff is fifty-eight. I repeat, I won't make wild guesses about the significance of the list, but it's worrying that Wolff's name comes up in a
mysterious
context at a time like this.'

‘Like what?' Sabrina said.

‘Well, as you know, the complexities of ICON have multiplied in the past year. What you don't know is that as more law-enforcement agencies have committed their data to the network, Andreas Wolff has become indispensable. ICON'S continued existence depends on his expertise.'

‘You mean,' Mike said, ‘that half the world's police and national security organizations have been silly enough to put all their eggs in one basket? How come?'

‘It's not an ideal state of affairs,' Philpott said, ‘and nobody planned it that way. Wolff has become so closely linked to the system, and to determining its rate of development, that he's pulled ahead of others in the field. No one else understands his programming routines or his security protocols.'

‘So if anything were to happen to Wolff,' Whitlock said, ‘archive security could stagnate and the files would soon be vulnerable.'

‘That's precisely what I'm saying. The potential gain from hacking into ICON is vast. It's inestimable. And it pains me to tell you that the possibility of
getting inside ICON is the driving force behind a lot of developments in electronic crime.'

‘Do hackers stand a serious chance?' Lucy said.

‘Oh, yes, they have a chance and they've taken it. ICON'S security has already been breached.'

Lucy looked startled. So did Sabrina.

‘Twice in three weeks,' Philpott said. ‘Each time it was open for only a microsecond before alternative encryption routines cut in, but the warning is clear enough. The current generation of safeguards is being eroded, and we're not over-stocked with alternatives.'

‘Who's doing it?' Lucy said.

‘Lord knows who. I shouldn't think it's any one group. It suits criminal organizations anywhere in the world to have a hole knocked in law enforcement. Hackers try all the time, and they're fed big financial inducements to keep trying.'

‘So what's being done?' Mike said.

‘For the moment, Andreas Wolff provides emergency ICON security by changing the custodian routines at twelve-hour intervals. He will do this until his new generation of self-enhancing safeguards are test-run and installed.'

‘So if Wolff leaves the picture for any reason,' Sabrina said, ‘the whole of ICON security collapses?'

‘It could be that extreme,' Philpott said. ‘We could shut down ICON temporarily in an emergency, but the disruption would be catastrophic. It would be nearly as bad as having the system
broken into. The new security arrangements will change everything. ICON will in effect become auto-secure. But until then we remain at serious risk. Without Wolff's support, records and operational strategies could be uncloaked long enough to bring this organization's security to its knees.'

Philpott stopped abruptly and looked at his watch.

‘Right.' He stood. ‘That's it. I have to go. Compare notes. Make sure you all know the same amount about the case. The facts as they stand present us with a paradox, but in theory the way forward is simple. Find out what links the names on that list and you will have a line on why Emily Selby was killed. When you know that, you'll know what you're up against. Lucy, thanks for your input.'

Halfway to the door he stopped. ‘I may change my mind later, but in the meantime I think Sabrina should dig up the whole story on Emily Selby, with special reference to her association with Erika Stramm.'

‘Shouldn't we maybe get somebody to interview Stramm right away?' Whitlock said.

‘No. I want us to know something about the relationship before she feeds us her version. Mike, I want you to get to work on that key Sabrina found. C.W., keep trying for a linking factor between the names on the list.'

Philpott strode to the door and pulled it open.

‘In order to proceed we need a picture, something with shape and features we can identify. Do your best for me on this one.'

Mike and C.W. muttered assurances. Sabrina nodded.

‘I deserve it, after all,' Philpott said, and left.

‘Now, tell me honestly, what did you think? Were you bored? Or did you enjoy the visit as much as you told the guide you did?'

Karl Sonnemann, one week off his sixty-fourth birthday, stood smiling like a boy on the street outside Goethe's birthplace in Frankfurt. His hands rested on the shoulders of Charlotte Gustl, a slender, shapely Münster girl with hair the colour of butter. Charlotte was twenty-two, one of Karl's literature students at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University. As of last night she was technically his mistress, too.

‘I truly, truly loved the place,' Charlotte said. ‘I'm sure I shall dream about it.'

‘I did feel that a visit to the birthplace might touch a chord in you,' Karl said.

‘Seeing that little room where he slept. Where he had his dreams, oh…' Charlotte clasped her hands under her chin. ‘I could feel, or I imagined I could feel, the surge of the forces that empowered
him. This has given me a new perspective on Goethe, Professor.'

‘Karl,' he said, beaming at her. ‘I told you, call me Karl.'

‘Very well.' She coloured a little as he slid his arm through hers. ‘I seem to have moved forward
years
in the space of twenty-four hours.'

‘As they walked towards the taxi rank he squeezed her arm, thinking how alike they all were, the girls he picked to be his special blossoms for a term or two. How much alike in the way they looked, in what they said, in how they gave their bodies to him, season after season…

How much alike, yet he never tired of them, and he found each one breathtakingly new. When he turned fifty a friend had winked at him and asked him how long now, how long before he would have to defer to his years and abandon his little hobby. At the time, Karl had said he would never cease, not until he died, and he said it wishing it were true. Now he felt it might indeed be true; he would simply never stop. The girls showed no more resistance as time passed, he still managed to charm them and, just as important, he could identify the ones he had charmed the most, and so take advantage.

‘I thought we would have a leisurely lunch at Alexander's,' he said, ‘and then go back to the university, where my only tutorial of the day is with a Fräulein Charlotte Gustl, if I'm not mistaken.'

She chuckled. It was a moist throaty sound, a variation of the sounds she made against his ear in the night, under crisp sheets at the Excelsior Hotel. For a moment Karl found himself overcome by the swiftness of one sound conjuring up another, and by the sharp, tactile memory of her warmth and closeness…

‘There's that young man again,' Charlotte said.

‘Which one?'

‘The one I said was watching you at the birthplace.'

Karl turned. The young man was looking in a shop window a few metres away. Karl had noticed him as they went into Goethe's house, standing by the edge of the pavement, looking aimless, or trying to. For a terrible moment Karl considered the possibility that the young man, for all his fair-haired, clear-eyed wholesomeness, was a detective. What if Ursula, after so many years, had begun to suspect, and had set this snooper to find out for sure?

Karl turned away, smiling at the wildness of his imagination. ‘I think he has taken your fancy, that young man. You seem to be tracing his movements.'

‘Oh! That's not true!' Charlotte looked genuinely offended. ‘How could you think such a thing?'

She stopped talking abruptly and started over Karl's shoulder. He turned and saw the young man had stepped over beside them. His face was very serious and purposeful. He glanced beyond them to the taxi rank, then looked directly at Karl.