“Cryogenic what?” Auger interjected, alarm bells ringing in her head.
“I’ve said too much.”
Floyd took a renewed grip on Altfeld’s raincoat and lifted him higher, until the back of his collar snagged on the spiked points of the iron railings. Floyd let him dangle. “You’ve only just whetted my appetite.”
Altfeld’s breath caught in his throat. “Late in the contract, the client revealed that the spheres would have to withstand immersion in liquid helium, at a temperature only a whisker above absolute zero. This in turn created numerous difficulties. Now leave me alone!”
“It sounds as if you were being asked to do the impossible,” Floyd said. “Why didn’t you just back out of the contract, if the details kept changing?”
“We tried,” Altfeld said. “And that is when I learned of our clients’ capacity for ruthlessness. There was to be no backing out, they said.”
“I take it you called their bluff.”
“Yes. And then one of my senior managers—the man who had conducted the last round of negotiations with my clients—was found dead in his home.”
“Murdered?” Floyd asked.
“He had been bludgeoned to death in his conservatory. Yet this had happened on a sunny afternoon, when his home was in full view of many witnesses. No one was seen to come and go. At least, no one who could possibly have committed the crime.”
“Except maybe a child,” Floyd said.
Altfeld nodded gravely, and suddenly all the fight drained out of him, as if he had just been told something he desperately wished not to be true. Floyd sensed the change in his mood, as if on some level Altfeld was glad to be able to talk to someone at last, no matter how fearful the consequences.
“During the final stages of the contract, when the spheres were being evaluated and shipped, I saw children all over the place. They followed me wherever I went. They were always around, visible just out of the corner of my eye. I haven’t seen any since the factory burnt down. I hope I go to my grave still able to say that.”
“They frightened you?” Auger asked.
“Once, I was close enough to one to look it in the face. It is an experience I hope never to repeat.”
Auger leaned closer to him. “I can understand you being afraid of those children, Mister Altfeld. You were right to be afraid. They are very dangerous and they will kill to protect their interests. But we’re not working with them. In fact, we’re doing all in our power to stop them.”
“Then you are even more foolish than I suspected. If you had any sense you would leave this matter well alone.”
“We just need an address,” Floyd said. “A lead. That’s all we’re asking for. Then you won’t hear from us again.”
“But I will hear from them.”
“If you help us, then maybe we can stop them before they reach you,” Auger said.
Altfeld let out a small, henlike clucking sound, as if this was the least convincing reassurance he’d ever heard.
“At least tell us where the production took place,” Floyd said.
“I will tell you nothing. If you have found your way to me, I am sure you are capable of continuing your investigation without my assistance.”
Floyd found some strength he didn’t know he had and hauled Altfeld even higher, lifting his collar free of the railing. He moved his grip down the buttons of his raincoat until he had the man by the waist and then levered him higher, until his head and upper body were leaning back over the railings and the sheer drop into the enclosure.
Altfeld let out a gasp of fright as his centre of gravity began to shift backwards.
“Tell me,” Floyd hissed, “tell me or I’ll push you over.”
Auger tried to pull Floyd away from Altfeld, but Floyd had had enough of lies and evasions. He didn’t care how scared this man was; how innocent a part he had played in some larger conspiracy. All he cared about was Custine and whatever it was that had made Auger wake up screaming.
“Give me an address, you bastard. Give me an address or I’ll feed you to the birds.”
Altfeld wheezed, as if suffering some kind of seizure. Between ragged breaths he gasped out, “Fifteen… building fifteen.”
Floyd lowered him to the ground, leaving him sagging against the railings.
“That’s a good start.”
By the time they returned to the hotel, it was too late to consider driving out to the industrial district where Kaspar Metals had been located. “We’ll take a cab out there first thing tomorrow,” Floyd said. “Even if we don’t find anyone around to talk to, there might be something left behind after the fire that we can use.”
“Altfeld was keeping something back,” Auger said. “What, I don’t know, but he wasn’t telling us the whole story.”
“Do you think he knew anything about Silver Rain?”
“No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t. Like I said, there simply isn’t the manufacturing base available here to put it together. The metal spheres are part of something different.”
“But probably related,” Floyd said. “Maybe we should pay Altfeld another visit, see if we can squeeze something else out of him.”
“We should leave him alone,” Auger said. “He just seemed like a scared old man.”
“They always do.”
“Perhaps there’s nothing else of use he could have told us,” she said, hoping to steer Floyd away from the idea of tormenting Altfeld further.
“Maybe there isn’t, but someone has to know more. Altfeld might have handled the contracts, but whoever was doing the actual machining—the factory-floor work—must have had a better idea of what those spheres were for, if they were ever going to calibrate them correctly.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“We’ll go to the site of the factory first thing tomorrow and see what we can find out. If that opens up new lines of enquiry, we’ll follow them. You said there was enough money to keep us in this hotel for a while?”
“Yes,” she said, “but we can’t stay here for ever. Or at least I can’t. I need to be back in Paris by Tuesday. That means catching the overnight train tomorrow evening.”
“Why the hurry? We only arrived here this morning.”
“I just need to be back in Paris. Can we leave it at that?”
They went out to eat at seven, riding the S-bahn to Friedrich-strasse and then walking back along the banks of the Spree until they found a cluster of restaurants near the newly refurbished Reichstag. They ate a good curryworst, followed by chocolate cake, and listened to an old Bavarian couple trying to remember the names of all nineteen of their great-grandchildren.
Afterwards, Floyd and Auger walked the streets until Floyd heard live music coming from the window of a basement bar: guitar-based gypsy jazz of the kind he didn’t hear enough of in Paris these days. He suggested to Auger that they spend half an hour in the bar before returning to the hotel. So down they went into the smoke and light of the music room, the sound suddenly much louder than it had been from the street. Floyd bought Auger a glass of white wine and a shot of brandy for himself. He sipped at his drink, appraising the band as fairly as he could. It was a quintet, with tenor saxophone, piano, double bass, drums and guitar. They were playing “A Night in Tunisia.” The guitarist was good—an earnest young man with thick glasses and a surgeon’s fingers—but the rest of them needed some work. At least they had a band, Floyd thought dolefully.
“Your sort of music?” he asked Auger.
“Not really,” she said, with a shy expression.
“They’re all right. Guitarist has it down, but he shouldn’t stick with these guys. They’re going nowhere.”