‘Well. He confirmed he and Emma saw Kay Ortmann yesterday.’
‘We know that. But the surveillance tapes show she didn’t tell them anything.’
‘That’s true. But Phil said Emma knows where Lothar is.’
‘Did he say how she knows?’
‘No. But he did tell me where. They are planning to track Lothar down tomorrow.’
Heike was glad Phil had spilled the beans about Lothar’s whereabouts. After the debacle in Annecy, the plan had changed, at Rozhkov’s suggestion. The idea now was to let Phil and Emma lead them to Lothar, and then kill him. And them. And the agent buried deep within the British establishment for the last forty years would remain safely buried, as would the couple of others still in place that he had recruited in turn.
She really must do a better job of dealing with Phil. He was going to die — she knew it, and she should be able to handle it if she was to be the professional agent she aspired to be. She had done a lot for her country; there was a lot more she could do.
She was glad she hadn’t had to sleep with him again that night. Phil had declined her suggestion, saying he had a long drive the following day.
As, therefore, did she and Rozhkov.
‘Well done,’ said Rozhkov. ‘So where are they leading us tomorrow?’
Heike told him.
Fifty-Four
Phil’s tiny travelling alarm clock went off at 4 a.m. He was in a deep sleep, and it took all his willpower to drag himself out of bed and stand under a shower for five minutes. He was supposed to be meeting Emma in the hotel lobby at 4.30 a.m.
As soon as he had returned to the Bristol the evening before he had knocked on Emma’s door and forced her out and down to the bar for a drink. He was more inclined than ever to believe that her room was bugged. She had seen from his face that something important was up, and under the murmur of the cocktail-hour crowd, Phil had explained that Freddie had summoned him to his hotel, and that he was now dead, run over on a side street.
A succession of emotions swept across Emma’s face: shock, sadness, fear and then resolution.
‘It was the KGB, wasn’t it?’ Phil said.
‘Must have been. Do you know why Freddie wanted to talk to you?’
‘No idea,’ Phil lied.
‘We need to leave this city,’ Emma said.
Phil heartily agreed. Freddie’s death had badly shaken him; he didn’t want to spend a moment longer than he had to in Berlin. ‘Shall we go right now?’
‘Yes.’ Then Emma hesitated. ‘Maybe not right now. We’re both tired and we have a very long journey ahead of us.’ That’s when she came up with the plan of getting up at four in the morning.
Emma was waiting for him in the lobby, looking as resolute as ever. She had summoned the TR6 to the hotel entrance. It was already light outside, but the Kurfürstendamm was quiet. Out on the street the sun was rising behind the broken spire of the church, painting stripes of rose and gold along the upper floors of the buildings along the street.
The roads were empty. But as they approached the western suburb of Zehlendorf, and the checkpoint from West Berlin back on to the autobahn corridor through East Germany, a number of lorries began to accumulate.
It was here that they were most likely to be stopped, either by the West German authorities if they had realized Phil knew something about Freddie’s death, or by the East German border guards. Phil and Emma had discussed this, and decided that if the East Germans had been happy to follow them to visit Kay without arresting them, they would be likely to allow them out of Berlin.
The reasoning sounded plausible. But it could be wrong. The only way they would know was when they were safely driving along the corridor itself.
Both sets of border guards let them through, the East German taking longer than his western counterpart, but that in itself wasn’t suspicious. And then they were off on the autobahn, heading to Helmstedt, Braunschweig and Hanover.
Emma and Phil were wrapped up in their own thoughts. It was too early to talk. On the open road, with no speed limit, Phil put his foot down, nudging the speedometer past a ton.
He checked his grandmother, who caught his eye and grinned. The sun hung low behind them, urging them on.
It appeared that giving a false name to the manager at the Hotel Zoo had worked, at least for a little bit. Swann would hear of Freddie’s death soon enough. The British Embassy had already been told, and presumably the news would spread around Whitehall to reach him. Phil had considered trying to telephone him, reverse charges, the night before, and telling him that Lothar was in Spain.
But Phil was cautious. The safest choice seemed to be to keep as low a profile as they could until they actually found Lothar. Then he would telephone Swann.
Who was this damn mole anyway? Of course, it could easily be someone Emma had never met, someone who hadn’t been part of her story yet — someone like Denis Healey — or more likely someone of whom Phil hadn’t even heard. In which case there was no point in Phil trying to speculate.
But if it was someone Emma knew from the 1930s, then that would explain Swann’s insistence Phil keep their conversation from her.
If the mole was a friend of Emma’s.
Or if Emma had recruited the mole herself.
That would mean Emma had not been completely open in the stories she had told Phil; she had held things back.
It was possible. In fact, she had always admitted she was holding information back, information that it would be dangerous for Phil to know.
So if Emma knew the mole, who might it be?
Kurt would have been a good guess. He had risen in the ranks of the West German Foreign Ministry. But he was dead; almost certainly killed by the KGB.
What about Roland? Had Emma recruited Roland at some point, maybe after their reconciliation?
But Roland, too, was dead. It sounded as if Swann was looking for a mole that was still burrowing.
There was another obvious possibility.
‘Grams?
‘Yes.’
‘You know you said Freddie spied for the Russians before the war?’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘Do you think he might still have been working for them?’
Even as he was driving, Phil could feel Emma’s sharp brown eyes studying him closely.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I was trying to figure out why he was killed.’
‘You mean, you think it might have been the British? Because he was a Russian spy?’
‘I don’t know, Grams,’ Phil said. ‘I’m just trying to make sense of this.’
‘I suppose he might have been working for the KGB. But I think it unlikely. He did help MI5 track down Burgess and Maclean, and I think Philby.’ She sighed. ‘That’s the problem with this spying business. You never really know. Even when it’s your own brother.’
A tear crept down her cheek. ‘Freddie was exasperating, but I liked him.’
‘I’m sorry, Grams,’ said Phil.
But his mind continued to roam. ‘What about Cyril?’
‘Cyril?’
‘Do you think he has anything to do with Kurt’s death?’ Phil asked. ‘Kurt did know Cyril was a spy, after all.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Emma hesitantly. But it was clear the idea hadn’t occurred to her.
Emma was thinking too.
‘If you’re looking for a spy, I don’t think you need look much further than Heike.’
Phil glanced at Emma and swallowed. ‘I saw her last night, Grams.’
‘You what?’
‘I slipped out to see her for a drink. Just before I went to meet Freddie at the Hotel Zoo.’
‘But I told you to stay clear of her!’
‘I know you did. But I thought you were wrong; I was sure you were wrong.’