‘It depends if he’s spotted us,’ grunted Anspach.
But the taxi containing Pigot didn’t stop. It drove on at a stately pace down Unter den Linden until it turned off into a small quiet square and drew up in front of the Hotel Schmitzkopf, an ornate six-storey building with little balconies and flower boxes, an oasis of nineteenth-century solidity amid the city’s East German decrepitude and its obsession with new build. This was a hotel designed for comfort rather than style. We have seen it all before, the hotel’s stone façade seemed to say. Fads come and go, but the Hotel Schmitzkopf remains the same.
Warned by a text from Beckerman in his taxi, Anspach and Dimitz had stopped their Mercedes further up Unter den Linden, behind a skip that was half full of broken asphalt. They waited fifteen minutes, then Anspach got out. He turned into the square, climbed the steps to the glass and oak door of the hotel and went into the ground-floor lobby, where at this late hour the soft sofas and chintz-covered armchairs were unoccupied.
At the reception desk a young blonde woman in a smart black suit gave a welcoming smile from behind a large bowl of wrapped sweets. Her face fell slightly when Anspach produced a card identifying him as a government official and asked for the manager.
‘He’s on his break,’ the girl said hesitantly. ‘Do you want me to fetch him for you, sir?’
‘That won’t be necessary. Tell me – a man came in a few minutes ago and checked in. A Herr Pigot, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘No, sir,’ said the girl. ‘That was Herr Pliska. He’s a Polish gentleman. He and his wife are in Room 403. She arrived this afternoon. We have no guest called Pigot and no booking in that name.’
‘Oh,’ said Anspach. Then, after a pause while he absorbed the new information he said, ‘I must have made a mistake. Got the wrong hotel. Please don’t mention to anyone that I was inquiring for Herr Pigot. It’s a matter of national security,’ he added solemnly.
‘Certainly not, sir,’ the girl replied, wide-eyed. ‘Shall I let you know if Herr Pigot turns up?’
‘Please do,’ replied Anspach. ‘Here is a card with a number to ring,’ and he handed her an official-looking card with no name on it and a telephone number that didn’t exist.
Chapter 13
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Annette Milraud got up from the chair where she had been watching TV as soon as Milraud walked into the hotel room. ‘Why did you tell me to change hotels and names? Did something happen in Paris?’
She paused as Milraud dropped his bag onto the floor and sat down on the bed. He was tired. Tired of life on the run. He’d always known that things would be difficult when he cheated his old employer, the DGSE, and went underground. But he’d thought that eventually some sort of steady state would emerge, allowing him to live without constantly looking over his shoulder.
He’d been wrong. His old employer had not forgotten him. And everywhere he went he’d been conscious that somewhere in the shadows they were there, waiting to pounce if he gave them the smallest chance. There had been financial rewards greater than anything he had ever enjoyed before, but with them went a total lack of peace of mind.
Annette was always angry these days, always nagging. He was taking too many risks, she said, but he had tried to explain that it was only because he took risks that he could make the kind of money he did and she could live in the style she demanded. Risk and money were linked like uneasy soulmates, bonded as unhappily as… Milraud and Annette.
They had been together seventeen years, married for fifteen of them. At first, they had been very happy. He enjoyed his work at the DGSE and she was content with their life in the prosperous Parisian suburbs, such a far cry from her humble origins in Toulon in the south of France. He realised later that her single goal then had been to have children, and that compared with this nothing else mattered.
It was when, after every kind of test, the doctors had finally told them that having a family simply wasn’t going to happen, that Annette’s dissatisfaction had begun. It was as if money had replaced children as her objective, and making the kind of money she had in mind was no more likely for Milraud as an officer in the DGSE than having children with his wife.
Then an operation to bust an arms deal had gone wrong, through an untimely intervention by the Swiss authorities. For a few hours the money at the heart of the deal had floated in a kind of no man’s land between the dealer and the buyer. It was there for the asking, and before anyone had thought to reclaim it, Milraud had seen his chance – and taken it.
And since then money had led to the pursuit of more money – and more trouble. He had left the Service under a cloud that soon turned into a criminal investigation and a warrant for his arrest. He had fled France, escaping by the skin of his teeth, with Interpol fast on his heels. In the years that followed, his new business dealing in arms had become global. He had set up shop in Venezuela, where he had made certain arrangements that he felt confident would keep him safely out of the reach of Interpol and the European and American intelligence services. From there he ventured forth carefully, using a multitude of different passports, and usually to countries where there was no danger of extradition – certain Central European countries, the Middle East, parts of Asia, other South American countries. This trip to Western Europe was an exception and, as he was now realising, a mistake.
Now Annette was looking at him with irritation. ‘Go and get a shower and change. I’ve hung your clothes up in the wardrobe. Let’s get out of this stuffy old hotel and get some dinner. I’ve booked a table at a restaurant round the corner. You can tell me what happened while we eat.’
When he came out of the bathroom, Annette was getting dressed. She had put on a chic, tight-fitting black dress, and was trying on necklaces. He recognised one of them, a heavy silver chain he had bought for her in Geneva. The others she had bought for herself, with his money.
‘Which one?’ she asked as he came out of the bathroom.
‘Which one what?’
‘Necklace, you idiot,’ she said, half crossly, half affectionately. He noticed the small chicken wing flaps of skin under her arms. Annette was growing older and he couldn’t offer her the certainty of a secure retirement.
She settled on a simple affair of thin gold strings braided together and turned for his approval. He nodded without looking at the necklace. ‘I’m a bit tired,’ he said.
‘Of course you are, chéri.’ She looked as if she would give him a hug for a moment, but the damp towel he’d wrapped around his middle put her off. ‘I think some supper would be just the thing. I’ve been cooped up all day waiting for you and worrying. Go on, darling, put some clothes on.’
He shook his head and she stared at him. He said, ‘I don’t think we should go out tonight. In fact, I know we shouldn’t go out tonight.’
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘This is the first time in months that I’ve been out of that violent, uncultured dump where you make us live, and now you say I have to stay in our hotel room?’
Milraud’s shoulders slumped. Annette looked at him despairingly. ‘I’m not asking to go dancing, Antoine; just a decent meal in a restaurant where the food isn’t Spanish. I thought that was the whole point of my joining you here in Germany.’
‘It was.’
‘Then what’s changed?’
He sighed. ‘I think they may be onto me.’
Annette looked at him, disbelieving. ‘Who’s they?’ she demanded.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Does it matter? The French – it could be our old friend Martin Seurat. Or the English. Or any number of countries. It doesn’t really matter. This is Western Europe, not South America. Countries here cooperate.’