Paluzzi sat behind the wheel of the white BMW 735i that Kuhlmann had had delivered to the hotel for them that morning. Graham sat beside him. Sabrina and Calvieri were in the back. They had been parked in the street that overlooked the Offenbach Centre for the past forty minutes, waiting for Kolchinsky to call them on the two-way radio lying on the dashboard. So far only silence. Paluzzi stared at the building in the distance. He remembered the official opening earlier in the year when one critic had called it ‘a monstrous glass and aluminium bandbox, without the ribbons’. He could see what the critic had meant. There was nothing appealing about it. A ten-storey building, cylindrical in shape, with a glass and aluminium exterior and a flat roof to accommodate a helipad. Helicopters had been landing and departing regularly in the last forty minutes and he was sure the traffic would get busier as the day wore on.
‘What’s the time?’ Graham asked, nudging Paluzzi’s arm.
Paluzzi pulled back his sleeve to reveal his gold Cartier watch.
‘Nine twenty-four. Where’s your watch?’
‘It got bust on the mountain yesterday. I’ll send it to the jeweller’s when I get back to New York. It’s pretty special to me.’
‘Was it a present from your wife?’
‘Yeah,’ Graham muttered, then lapsed into silence.
Paluzzi turned his attention back to the Offenbach Centre. The more he looked at it, the more he came to agree with the critic. Berne, a beautiful, medieval city, had always rebuffed the advances of modern development, and planning permission had been granted to Jacob Offenbach, the Swiss multimillionaire, only on condition that the Centre was built on the outskirts of the city, away from the charm of the Old Town district. The people of Berne had never taken it to their hearts, calling it the Raumschiff, the spaceship, because of its futuristic appearance and design. It would never be accepted by the locals, and he could see why.
‘Does anyone mind if I smoke?’ Calvieri asked, breaking the silence.
‘Yeah, I mind,’ Graham bit back, then threw up his hands dismissively. ‘What the hell, I’m going for a walk. Do what you want.’
‘Don’t go far,’ Paluzzi said. ‘Sergei could call at any moment.’
‘Stop panicking, I’m only going to that fruit and vegetable shop over there.’
Graham forced himself not to slam the door behind him. Sliding on his dark glasses, and then thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked the length of the narrow street to the shop. He crouched in front of the display outside, which was shaded from the sun by a white canopy, and tested the apples for their ripeness. He suddenly became aware that he was being watched. He looked up. A five-year-old boy stood in the doorway, pointing a toy gun straight at him. Graham feigned a look of surprise and slowly raised his hands. The boy glanced with alarm at Graham’s chest. Graham looked down. His bolstered Beretta was visible.
He immediately got to his feet and covered the holster with his jacket.
The boy stared fearfully at him, then ran into the shop. Graham cursed himself but a hand grabbed his arm before he could go after the boy. He spun round to find Sabrina behind him.
‘What happened?’ she asked, then glanced towards the doorway after he had told her. ‘I’ll talk to him. He’s hardly going to understand you, is he?’
Graham nodded and she disappeared into the shop. She emerged a minute later with a brown-paper bag in her hand. The boy was with her.
‘Magnum!’ the boy shouted with a wide grin, then pretended to shoot at Graham before hurrying up the street and disappearing into one of the houses.
‘He thinks I’m Magnum?’ Graham asked in amazement.
‘I told him you were a real-life Magnum. It certainly appealed to him.’
She took an apple from the bag and tossed it to Graham. They crossed the street to the site of a demolished house and sat on what remained of the front wall.
‘I’m sorry I snapped at you in the car,’ she said at length. ‘I had a pretty rough night. I don’t know how much sleep I actually got. About two hours, probably.’
‘That much?’ Graham replied, turning the apple in his hands. ‘I doubt I even got an hour.’
‘How did you pass the time?’
‘I watched television, there wasn’t much else to do.’
She sat forward, her elbows resting on her knees.
‘I tried to but I found I couldn’t concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. In the end I was just glad of the background noise. I don’t think I could have coped with the silence.’
‘I know what you mean. There was a soccer match on one of the channels. I stayed with it for the whole game but I still couldn’t tell you the score. Hell, I couldn’t even tell you who was playing.’ He tugged back her sleeve to check the time: 9.37. ‘Twenty-three minutes left. And here we are sitting around waiting to die.’
She put a hand lightly on his arm. ‘I hate this waiting as much as you do, but you know that Sergei’s right. If Ubrino did see us, he’d be sure to bolt. Then what?’
Paluzzi jabbed the horn and, climbing out of the car, beckoned them frantically to him. They ran to the car.
‘What is it?’ Graham asked breathlessly.
‘Sergei’s just been on the radio. Ubrino’s been caught inside the building but he won’t say anything unless Calvieri’s there.’
‘Did he have the vial on him?’ Sabrina asked, getting into the back.
Paluzzi glanced at her in the rearview mirror and shook his head.
‘He’s been searched from head to toe. It wasn’t on him.’
‘Was he wearing a disguise?’ Graham asked.
‘Not when he was caught,’ Paluzzi replied, starting the engine. ‘But he must have worn one to get into the building. How else would he have got past the guards?’
‘It doesn’t make any sense!’ Sabrina exclaimed, looking at Calvieri. ‘Why would he take off the disguise once he was inside the building? It’s almost as if he wanted to get caught.’
Calvieri shrugged. ‘We’ll find out soon enough. The main thing is he’s been caught.’
Paluzzi put a siren on the roof and drove the short distance to the southbound motorway. He took the turn-off for the Offenbach Centre and came to a stop three hundred yards further on in front of a red and white boom gate. An armed guard approached the car. Paluzzi produced the pass provided by Kuhlmann and, after checking it, the guard gave him directions to a side entrance where Kolchinsky would be waiting. The guard then gave the order to lift the boom gate. Paluzzi slid the car into gear and drove into the grounds.
Pantechnicons of varying shapes and sizes, covered with the logos of the world’s media, lined the sides of the road and spilled over into the massive car-park which had been designed to take two thousand cars.
There wasn’t a space available. Paluzzi drove around the perimeter then turned into the alley indicated by the guard and stopped beside a fire escape. Kolchinsky, who had been standing by the door, hurried forward to meet them.
‘Why all this cloak and dagger stuff?’ Calvieri asked, climbing from the back of the car. ‘Why can’t we use the main entrance like everyone else?’
‘Because we’re armed,’ Sabrina answered, patting her bolstered Beretta hidden discreetly beneath her beige jacket. ‘If we used the main entrance the X-ray machines would go berserk.’
‘Have you managed to get anything out of Ubrino yet, Sergei?’ Graham asked as they followed Kolchinsky to the door.
‘He refuses to say anything until he’s seen Calvieri.’
The guard at the door stood aside to let them pass then closed it again behind them. They were in the main foyer, which bustled with activity as journalists sought last-minute interviews with the politicians as they made their way towards the lifts. Kolchinsky took four ID passes from his pocket and handed them out.