"The Foreign Office?" Archie said incredulously. "Well, that's a new one."
"Not really," said Tom quietly. "He's a spook."
Turnbull smiled. "We prefer 'intelligence services.' In my case, Six."
Six, Tom knew, was how insiders referred to MI6, the agency that dealt with overseas threats to national security. It wasn't the sort of organization Tom wanted to get caught up in. Not again. He'd done five years in the CIA, seen how they worked, and had only just lived to regret it.
"So what do you want?"
"Your help," came the toneless reply as the car slowed to a halt at a set of lights.
Archie gave a short, dismissive laugh.
"What sort of help?" Tom asked quietly. Until he knew exactly what he was up against, he was forcing himself to play along.
"As much as you want to give."
"Oh, that's easy," Tom said. "None." Archie nodded his agreement. "Not unless you know something I don't…" People like Turnbull never made a move unless they had an edge, some sort of leverage. The key was to flush it out.
"No reason." Turnbull smiled. "No threats. No phony deals. No 'I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine.' If you help us it will be because, by the time I've finished telling you what I've got, you're going to want to."
"Come on, Tom, we don't have to listen to this shit. They've got nothing on us. Let's get out of here," Archie pleaded. But Tom hesitated. Something in Turnbull's voice had piqued his curiosity, even though he knew Archie was probably right.
"I want to hear him out."
The lights changed to green and the car drew away again.
"Good." Turnbull released his seat belt and turned to face them. He had a flat, featureless face, his cheeks rounded and fleshy, his chin almost disappearing into his neck. His brown eyes were small and set close together, while his long hair was parted in two wild cowlicks in the middle of his head and fell like curtains that he had draped behind his ears.
In many ways, Tom thought, he was a most unlikely-looking spy. The best ones always were. Certainly he had an easygoing confidence that Tom had observed in other field agents in the past, and good agents at that.
"Have you ever heard of a group called Kristall Blade?" Turnbull asked.
"No," said Tom.
"No reason you should have, I suppose. They're a small band of extremists with loose ties to the Nationalde-mokratische Partei Deutschlands, or the NPD, the most active neo-Nazi political group in Germany. They're supposedly run by a former German Army captain called Dmitri Miil-ler, although no one's ever seen him to confirm it. To be honest, we don't know a huge amount about them."
Tom shrugged. "And?"
"And from the little we do know, these aren't your regular skinheads cruising around the suburbs looking for immigrants to beat up. They're a sophisticated paramilitary organization who are still fighting a war that the rest of us think ended in 1945."
"Hence the name?" It was more a statement than a question. Tom knew his history well enough to guess that Kristall Blade must have drawn their inspiration from Kristall-nacht — the fateful night in late 1938 when Nazi-inspired attacks on Jewish businesses had left the streets of Germany's cities littered with broken glass.
"Exactly," Turnbull said eagerly. "They used to fund their activities by hiring themselves out as freelance hit men behind the Iron Curtain, but these days they're into small-scale drug and protection rackets. They're suspected of involvement in a range of guerrilla-style terrorist atrocities aimed primarily at Jewish communities in Germany and Austria. There are no more than ten or twenty active members, with a wider group of supporters and sympathizers perhaps a hundred strong. But that's what makes them so dangerous. They slip under the radar of most law-enforcement agencies and are almost impossible to pin down."
"Like I said, I've never heard of them."
Turnbull continued, undeterred. "Nine days ago, two men broke into St. Thomas' Hospital and murdered three people. Two of them were medical staff — witnesses, most likely. The third was an eighty-one-year-old patient by the name of Andreas Weissman. He was an Auschwitz survivor who moved here after the war." Tom was silent, still uncertain where this was leading and what it had to do with him. "They amputated Weissman's left arm below the elbow while he was still alive. He died of a heart attack."
"They did what?" Archie sat forward at this latest piece of information.
"Cut his arm off. His left forearm."
"What the hell for?" Tom this time.
"That's where we want your help." Turnbull smiled, revealing a disconcerting set of overlapping and crooked teeth.
"My help?" Tom frowned. "It's nothing to do with me."
"I thought you'd say that," said Turnbull, bracing himself against the window as the car turned a corner. "The killers stole the surveillance tapes from the ward, but one of them was caught on CCTV as they left the building." He produced another photo and passed it back. Tom and Archie took it in turn to examine the image, but both shook their heads.
"No idea," said Archie.
"Never seen him before," Tom agreed.
"No, but we have," Turnbull continued. "Which is how we were able to make the link to Kristall Blade. He's Dmitri's number two, Colonel Johann Hecht. Last time we caught up with him was in Vienna about three months ago when one of our agents snapped him in a restaurant." He handed Tom a third photograph. "He's about six foot seven and has a scar down his right cheek and across his lip, so you can't exactly miss him."
"I'm still waiting for the punch line here." Tom's frustration was mounting, and he passed the photo to Archie without even glancing at it. "What's this man got to do with me?"
"Christ!" Archie grabbed Tom's arm. "Look at who he's sitting opposite."
The color drained from Tom's face as he recognized the man that Archie was pointing at.
"It's Harry," he stammered, the smiling, carefree face in the photo instantly sweeping away the fragile barricades he had sought to erect around that part of his life over the last six months. "It's Renwick."
CHAPTER TEN
Harry Renwick paid his admission at the Glyptotek entrance on the corner of Tietgensgade and H. C. Ander-sens Boulevard and walked inside. It was still quiet at this hour, most people, he knew, preferring to visit after dark when the Tivoli turned into a light-filled oasis of over 115,000 incandescent bulbs amid the city's dark winter nights.
Despite the time, though, most of the rides were already open. The oldest, a large wooden roller coaster known to locals as Bjergrutschebanen, or the Mountain Roller Coaster, roared in the distance, the screams of its few passengers evaporating into the thin winter air in clouds of warm steam.
Renwick was certainly dressed for the weather, a blue velvet trilby pulled down low over his ears, a yellow silk scarf wound several times around his neck before disappearing into the folds of his dark blue overcoat. With his chin buried in the warmth of his upturned collar, only his nose and eyes could be seen, intelligent, alert, and as cold and unfeeling as the snow that coated the trees and rooftops around him.
He paused in front of a souvenir stall, icicles dangling menacingly from the overhanging roof. As he scanned its contents he shifted his right arm in his pocket, wincing slightly. No matter how well he wrapped it up, the cold penetrated the stump where his hand had once been and made it ache. Eventually he found what he was looking for and pointed it out to the sales assistant, handing over a hundred-kroner note. Slipping his purchase into a red bag, she counted out his change and smiled as he tipped his hat in thanks.