‘You hinted you might not be going back to London after all, so I thought I would call you at your hotel on the off-chance. What happened?’
‘I decided to stay.’
‘And did you go to the east?’
‘I did. I actually surprised my grandmother in a taxi on the other side.’
‘How did she take that?’
‘She was a bit pissed off, but then she seemed happy.’
‘Great. Look, can we meet up this evening?’
‘I’d like to.’ Once again, Phil wasn’t sure what to do. He had promised to see Emma for dinner and it would be hard to ditch that, especially if he said he was meeting Heike. He could sneak out of the hotel afterwards. Or he could see Heike for a quick drink before he met Freddie.
‘Tell you what, I have to see someone at the Hotel Zoo at six thirty. Can you meet me before then?’
‘I can do that,’ said Heike. ‘How about that café in Tauentzienstrasse where your grandmother took us before? Half past five?’
‘That’s good. See you then.’
Fifty-Three
Phil had time to pick up his rucksack from the left luggage office at Zoo Station before he met Heike, all the time stewing over what his grandmother had said about her.
Heike was waiting for him at the café, wearing a yellow Atomkraft? Nein Danke T-shirt and tight black jeans. She looked gorgeous. Images of her naked in the dim light of the squat the previous night slid their way to the forefront of Phil’s brain.
She didn’t look anything like the men in hats and raincoats of the classic spy film, or even the pneumatic women with enormous breasts and tight-fitting dresses of the Bond films.
But she didn’t look twenty. Phil’s friend Mike’s older sister Rachel was twenty-one, and Heike looked older than her.
They kissed each other hesitantly, a quick brush on the lips. Phil ordered a beer, and Heike a glass of wine. She did seem pleased to see him.
She asked all about his trip to East Berlin, and he admitted he had seen Kay, the woman he had told her about in Paris and Berlin before the war. He told Heike Emma had asked Kay about the man who had ‘handled’ her on behalf of the Russians, but Kay had insisted the man was dead.
Naturally enough, Heike was fascinated. It was a fascinating story.
‘So are you staying in Berlin?’
‘No. We’re off tomorrow.’
‘Where?’
‘Grams discovered from someone else where this guy is. And we’re going to see him tomorrow. It’s going to be a very long drive.’
‘Really? Where are you going?’
Phil strolled past the Hollow-Tooth Church down the Kurfürstendamm to the Hotel Zoo, which was a flashy hotel only half a block from the Bristol. He was five minutes late, but Freddie was not in the bar.
Phil sat down, somewhat uncomfortably. He felt what he was, a scruffy boy in a hotel for international jet-setters. After he had twice turned down a disapproving waiter trying to offer him drinks, he left the bar and headed for the front desk in the hotel lobby. Something was up: a ripple of suppressed anxiety surrounded the half-dozen men and women conferring behind the desk.
Phil stood politely next to the desk while they ignored him. Finally, a woman came over and smiled stiffly.
‘I’m waiting for a guest in your hotel. Herr Pelham-Walsh,’ Phil stated in German. ‘Can I telephone his room, please?’
The smile disappeared. ‘One moment.’ She turned to the group of staff. ‘Herr Klauber? This gentleman is supposed to be meeting Herr Pelham-Walsh.’
An immaculate man of about fifty, with perfectly groomed hair and a neatly trimmed moustache, instantly detached himself from the group and introduced himself as the manager.
He led Phil through to the recesses of an office behind the desk and bade Phil sit down.
‘I am sorry to say that Herr Pelham-Walsh was killed this afternoon in a road accident,’ the man said in English. ‘Just a couple of blocks from here. It was a hit-and-run.’
‘Oh my God!’
‘Is he a relative of yours?’
‘No. No.’
‘A friend perhaps?’
Phil’s brain fizzed. He wasn’t going to waste time speculating whether Freddie had been killed by accident; the MP had been run down deliberately, probably by the Stasi or the KGB. Possibly to stop Phil talking to him right now. Phil couldn’t think through all the implications of this immediately, but his instinct was that it would be better if the West German authorities didn’t know who he really was.
‘Godfather.’
‘And you were supposed to meet him?’
‘Yes. He contacted me to say he was staying in Berlin for a couple of days and he knew I was here, and could I meet him this evening? So I said yes I would.’
‘I’m very sorry, sir.’
Phil realized he should be looking sad. He also realized he was probably looking as stunned as he felt, which would do fine.
‘We understand that Mr Pelham-Walsh was an important man in Britain? A member of parliament?’
‘Not just that. A government minister. Or he used to be.’
The hotel manager absorbed the information, no doubt ratcheting up the problem a notch.
‘We have been in touch with the British Embassy. Do you have his wife’s contact details, perhaps? Or his home phone number?’
‘Freddie wasn’t married,’ Phil said, with some degree of confidence. ‘And my address book is back at my hotel.’
‘I see. I am sure the police or someone from the embassy will be here shortly. Would you mind waiting until they arrive?’
‘Not at all,’ said Phil.
‘Thank you, sir.’ The manager got to his feet. ‘Oh, forgive me, sir. What is your name?’
‘Oh. Um. Eustace. Eustace Parsons.’
Eustace? His French teacher Eustace? Get a grip, Phil told himself. But the truth was his brain was tumbling. First Kurt, and now Freddie.
Who next?
Phil had an uncomfortable feeling it might be him. Or Emma. Or both of them.
Fear was seeping into his brain, seizing it up, preventing rational thought.
Get a grip.
‘Thank you.’ The manager scribbled the name down on a piece of paper. ‘And where are you staying?’
‘The youth hostel in Bayernallee.’ Better.
The manager’s nose remained unwrinkled as he wrote this down. ‘And your home address?’
Phil spelled out a random address in Marlow, the closest town to Wittingcombe.
The manager floated off, and Phil hung around in the lobby, doing his best to overcome his agitation.
He did mind waiting for the police or a man from the embassy, actually. Once he got himself ensnared with the authorities, it would be impossible for him and Emma to get away to Spain.
So, while the bodies behind the reception desk were conferring, he slipped unnoticed out of the front entrance and hurried down the street towards his own hotel.
Heike was strolling along Tauentzienstrasse when a battered green BMW pulled up beside her. She jumped in. Rozhkov was in the driver’s seat.
‘What happened to the other car?’ she asked. Rozhkov had been driving an equally battered grey Mercedes.
‘I had to get rid of it.’
‘Pelham-Walsh?’
‘Yes. I got him on a side street. Only possible witness was a young woman with two children, and I’m sure she was looking at them, not me.’
‘Dead?’
‘Dead.’
Traffic accidents were better than more blatant liquidations, especially for high-profile targets like Pelham-Walsh. A shooting would have stirred up a hornets’ nest. The problem was, hit-and-runs weren’t always reliable; at least this one had been successful.
‘How did it go with young Phil?’ Rozhkov asked.