The Janus Man (52 page)

*

Franck had stepped out of the elevator into a deserted corridor. He checked the numbers of the rooms. He found 303 at the end of the corridor. He tried the handle gently. The door was locked. He inserted his pick-lock, fiddled, felt the lock slide open.

He went inside into a bedroom. The light was on. From the bathroom he heard the sound of running water. He turned to lock the door. No sign of the key. Too tricky to use the pick-lock. He'd want to leave quickly. He walked into the darkened bathroom.

Tweed was standing staring into the mirror over the washbasin. Munzel noticed the soap smears on the floor, gleaming in the dim light, the open windows beyond. A perfect set-up. So many accidents happened in bathrooms. He stepped behind Tweed. Their eyes met in the mirror. Tweed swung round with surprising speed. He dashed the glassful of water into Munzel's eyes. The German couldn't see for a moment. In that moment

Tweed brought the tough base of the glass down on the bridge of Munzel's large nose. His eyes watered — this time with real pain — but Tweed was too weak to have delivered the blow with great force.

`Bob! How good to see you...' Diana had half-risen from her seat, handbag tucked under her arm, when Newman walked into the restaurant. 'Tweed is here,' she went on. 'I was just going to find out what's happened to him...'

'Why?'

`He suddenly felt unwell. He went to his room. But he's been there a long time. I was going up to see him. And soon after he'd gone I saw a big blond German get up from his table over there and go out of the restaurant. From the back, the way he moved, in a great hurry....'

`Tweed's room number?'

`Three-O-Three...'

`Wait here. Don't move.'

Newman, remembering the placid pace of the elevator, ran up the staircase. 303? That was the room Tweed had occupied before. He knew exactly where it was. He reached the third floor, raced down the corridor, tried the handle and pushed it open quietly, pushing it almost closed behind him. The sounds came from the bathroom. He ran to the open door. Tweed was grappling with Franck, who had his huge arms round Tweed's waist, lifting him off the floor.

Newman, fresh from East Germany, took in the scene at a glance. The soap-smeared floor, the open windows beyond. He clenched his right fist, jerked his elbow back, rammed his fist forward, slamming a vicious kidney punch into the German. Franck let go of Tweed, doubled over, straightened up and started to turn. He slipped on the floor, skidded clear across the bathroom and his hands slapped down on the window ledge. He turned again and his feet slithered under him. He ended up half out of the window, his waist against the ledge, his long legs stretched in front of him.

He bent down, hauled up his left trouser leg, heaved out the broad-bladed knife from the sheath strapped to his leg. That reaction took a few seconds. Newman had crossed the bathroom,

avoiding the skid-marks. He stooped down, grasped Franck by the ankles, elevated them and shoved with all his strength.

The German shot out of the window, disappeared. They heard his wailing shriek, cut off suddenly, followed instantly by a horrible soft thud. Newman peered out. Franck lay spread-eagled in the yard far below, reminding Newman of one of those chalk-mark silhouettes police left behind, showing where the corpse was found.

`Anyone see him go?' Tweed asked.

`Doesn't look like it.'

`Keep it...' Tweed had trouble speaking.. quiet.'

He fumbled for his wallet, got it out, dropped it on the floor. Newman picked it up as Tweed crept into the bedroom, warning Newman to keep clear of the skid-marks He sagged on to the bed.

`Get Kuhlmann. Local police station. Possehl-strasse 4. Something like that. Folded sheet of paper. In my wallet. Tell him what happened. Discreetly...'

`I've found it. I'll get the number from the directory here.'

Newman made the call. He was put through to Kuhlmann almost immediately. The conversation was short. Newman put down the phone, came over to Tweed who had propped up a pillow and was slumped against it.

`He'll be here in-five minutes. I'll just pop downstairs, see Diana, stop her coming up. She was on her way when I went into the restaurant. Anything you need now?'

`One thing. Bob, get me a glass of water.'

Kuhlmann arrived with only one other man, a Dr Rimek, who insisted on examining Tweed while Kuhlmann spent time with Newman in the bathroom. Rimek, a humorous-looking man in his sixties, was thin and stooped and wore a pince-nez.

He listened while Tweed confined his description of what had happened in his hallucinatory experiences, nodding his head occasionally. Then he checked Tweed's pulse, blood pressure and used his stethoscope. He straightened up and grunted.

`What's the verdict?' Tweed asked in German.

`Tough as old hickory, you are. And you did just the right thing — drinking litres of water. I'd say it was mescaline, something like that, you were drugged with.' He looked up as Newman came back into the room. 'If that drink, whatever it was called...'

`Margharita,' Tweed said.

`If that drink is still on the table in the dining-room I'd like the glass for analysis...'

`I brought it up with me.' Newman opened the wardrobe and took a glass rimmed with salt from the top shelf. `This is it.'

`Excellent.' Rimek took a wide-mouthed plastic bottle out of his bag, poured the contents of the glass into it, screwed down the top. 'I'll know tomorrow...'

`Phone the results to me,' Kuhlmann called out from the bathroom door. 'He'll live, I take it? Good. And, Rimek, not one word about this to anyone else.'

Rimek took a blood sample before he left. He paused at the door, staring at Tweed. 'Two days' complete rest. You don't have to stay in bed. Just in the hotel. Maybe a short walk tomorrow afternoon. No more than two hundred metres. Same the day after. And no alcohol for two days. I'll get off now.'

Kuhlmann waited until Rimek had gone, then lit his cigar and began talking.

`Before I call the clean-up squad — fingerprint, photographer, forensic, etc — we have to get our story straight. Newman has told me what happened. Now I'll tell you. You feel up to this, I hope, Tweed?'

'Go ahead.'

`You don't want any publicity — being who and what you are. Newman arrived soon after you came up here.' Kuhlmann jabbed his cigar at Tweed to emphasize his point. 'You were never here. You were in the dining-room. You gave Newman your room key to borrow a handkerchief. He comes up, finds the door wide open, finds Franck rifling the room. Pull out a drawer in a minute, empty the contents on a floor. There's a struggle in the bathroom — where Newman found Franck taking a pee. Franck pulls a knife. That went down in the area with him. You've left the bathroom windows open — it's a hot night. Franck goes out of the window — slipped on the soap. That's it. Keep it simple. The local police chief is a pal of mine — I'll keep him off your back. I'm going to phone Possehl-strasse now.'

`How can you keep it quiet?' Tweed asked. 'Someone must have heard Franck — he screamed when he went down...'

`You'd be surprised how people don't hear things like that. The manager knows. I had a word with him before I came up. He won't talk. Hotel guests aren't keen on acts of violence. He took me into the area. There's a door under your window you can't see from up here, a door he locked and I have the key.'

`I'd better get out of here for the moment,' Tweed said.

`Definitely. Use Newman's room...'

'I think I can make the dining-room. I have a friend down there.'

`Better still. Your colour's coming back.'

While Kuhlmann was using the phone Tweed pointed to a drawer. Newman pulled it out, turned it upside down. Shirts, socks and handkerchiefs spilled on to the floor. He picked up one of the handkerchiefs embroidered with Tweed's initials.

`This,' he said, 'is the borrowed handkerchief. I'll give you mine — just in case some eager beaver searches me.'

`You might bring me some tissues from the box in the bathroom,' Tweed suggested, planting his feet on the floor, testing his strength before he stood up.

Newman brought the tissues and handed him one which he had screwed up. 'My handkerchief is inside that. If you don't mind keeping it.'

Tweed shoved it inside his jacket pocket and then started using the other tissues to dab at his jacket front, drying out the water he'd spilt down it. Diana was bound to spot the dampness, to ask what had caused it. He took several steps round the room, then paced more briskly. His head had stopped pounding.

Kuhlmann put down the phone, said the team would be there inside ten minutes, so they'd better get moving. And he'd be back the following day to talk some more.

`They'll have trouble smuggling Franck out,' Tweed said. `Oh, they'll scrape him up, cart the bits away.'

Forty-Nine

Tweed stayed up half the night in Newman's room, listening in silence to his account of his experiences in East Germany. Earlier he had gone down to the dining-room, assured Diana it was only a stomach upset. That covered the fact he hadn't felt like eating. Coffee, however, helped to clear his head.

He saw her safely to her room. As the door closed and he turned round he saw Harry Butler sitting in a chair close to the elevator, reading a copy of
Lübecker Nachrichten
, the local paper. He nodded to him and went to Newman's room.

`So,' he commented as Newman finished his report, 'you've had a pretty grim time.

`And now we know Dr Berlin is a fake. The trip was worth it to find that out.'

`I suspected it. But suspecting is one thing, knowing is another. Lysenko must have trained an impostor all those years ago. It's creepy — their long-distance planning. I want this kept quiet, Bob.'

`You mean we don't tell Kuhlmann?'

`Definitely not. Nor that bastard Peter Toll, who sent you in. Keep it just between the two of us.'

'Why?'

Tweed stirred in his chair, drank some more of the coffee sent up by room service. 'Because if I'm right, if Janus is what I suspect he is, we face the most appalling scandal in London if this ever got out. The press would have a field day. Like the Duke of Wellington, I'm feeling my way forward, tying knots in a rope. If I'm right, how I'm going to solve the problem God only knows. Janus is not only Lysenko's man in London — he may also be a mass murderer.'

`Janus? You've used that name twice...'

`The codeword I cooked up with Monica for the rotten apple sitting in my own barrel. Janus, like the January god. The man who looks both ways — to the East and the West.'

Tweed checked his watch. 3 a.m. He stood up, felt his legs were normal, walked into Newman's bathroom and quietly opened the window, gazing down into the well. Men in plain clothes were moving about. Kriminalpolizei. The body was covered with a tarpaulin. Through the open door beneath his own window he saw more men arriving, two carrying a stretcher. He shivered, closed the window silently.

`They're about to take Franck away,' he said, sitting down again. 'In the middle of the night. No one in the hotel will be any the wiser. Kuhlmann has been very cooperative — covering up the whole business, which is what I want.'

`So they won't know in Leipzig? They'll go on thinking Franck is still after you?'

`Exactly that. Also Pete Nield came over with me. Someone — as I expected — followed me from the airport. Butler followed them to an apartment in Altona. I have the address in my wallet. I'm giving it to Kuhlmann in the morning. He may find a way of neutralizing this character. He could just be the main link in the communications system Lysenko must have between here and East Germany.'

`And I caught sight of Harry Butler in the restaurant when I first arrived. You've brought over the big battalions.'

`I think we may need them. I sense we're close to the climax of this business...'

`Which I still don't understand,' Newman remarked. 'Janus is the traitor in the Park Crescent setup. Balkan is the controller of Markus Wolf's spy network in West Germany..

`Lysenko has deliberately made it complex. I'm convinced their set-up is diabolically simple. I think Janus and Balkan are the same man. A stroke of genius on the part of our Russian friend.'

`But that would mean the same man — Janus in London, Balkan over here — is controlling both our network and theirs. Theoretically, he'd be fighting himself...'

`But only theoretically,' Tweed pointed out. 'He'd be in a unique position to manipulate my agents the way he wanted to. Lysenko had pulled off an unprecedented coup.'

`
Had?
'

'I'm going to locate Janus and destroy him — and bring down Lysenko with him.'

Tweed's expression was grim as he stood up again and went to the bathroom. He came back after peering out of the window.

`I can go back to my own room, get a bit of shut-eye. They have gone, taken away the body. We'll talk about how we'll go about it in the morning.'

Tweed was finishing his breakfast in the room at the back of the Jensen when Newman reappeared and sat down, looking at Diana who was inserting a cigarette in her holder.

`You should have seen the meal he's had,' she said. 'Five rolls, lashings of butter, tons of marmalade. Nothing much wrong with his stomach today.'

`I was ravenous,' admitted Tweed. 'But I'm a new man now. Time to get cracking. And where have you been?' he asked Newman.

`To hire a car. An Audi. I foresaw something like this. We ride everywhere today. No walking.'

`Is Tweed all right?' Diana asked.

`Last night Bob insisted on getting a doctor in,' Tweed said quickly. 'He diagnosed a mild bout of food poisoning. Silly quack said I shouldn't walk more than two hundred metres for the next two days. The trouble is, Bob has taken him seriously.'

`I should think so, too,' Diana agreed forcefully. 'When you eventually came back to the restaurant last night you looked really out of sorts. And you couldn't eat anything. By the way, you said you had an appointment this morning. I think I'll go shopping, spend some of my ill-gotten gains...'

Tweed looked up sharply at the remark, then cursed himself for his mistake when she replied.