Close Call

Chapter 15

The Schweiber Mansion at the eastern end of Unter den Linden had once housed the private collection of Ernst Schweiber, a German manufacturer who became fabulously wealthy in the late nineteenth century. He and his sons after him had used their wealth to amass an eclectic collection of paintings, furniture and objets d’art from all over the world, which they had housed in their grand baroque mansion. But the mansion had had the misfortune to be in the path of the Red Army when it arrived in Berlin in 1945.

The Schweiber family had by then been long dispersed, some to other parts of Europe, some to their deaths in concentration camps. By the time the Russians arrived, part of the collection had already been removed by the Nazis. What remained was taken as booty by the conquerors, some of it to find its way eventually into galleries and museums in Moscow and Leningrad.

After the Berlin Wall went up, the Schweiber Mansion found itself in East Berlin, no longer grand but grimy, broken-windowed and pocked by shell holes. The house became home to a department of the Stasi and was feared and avoided as far as possible by East Berliners. As part of the restoration of East Berlin, the building had fairly recently been renovated to something of its former grandeur. But now, instead of sitting in an avenue of equally grand mansions, it rested uneasily between two glass-fronted office blocks, surprising the tourists who came to see what was at least a part of the Schweiber Collection, gathered together again from around the world and returned to Berlin after much diplomacy and haggling.

If Hans Anspach had known about the diplomacy and haggling, he would probably not have thought it worthwhile. He was gazing at a rather gruesome painting of someone being flayed alive. But in any case his mind was not on the art, for though the headphones he was wearing looked like those the museum supplied to visitors who wanted a commentary as they toured its collection, what he was hearing through them had nothing to do with art.

‘Still here,’ came from Beckerman, who was a few rooms away. Taking a couple of casual-looking steps, Anspach could see, through an arch, the back of Antoine Milraud’s head. The Frenchman was standing with half a dozen other visitors in front of a Corot which had lately made the news – to the embarrassment of the German authorities, it was now thought not to have been part of the Schweiber collection at all but to have been plundered by Field Marshal Göring from a French aristocrat in Burgundy, whose descendants were threatening to sue for its return. Beckerman added, ‘No movement.’

It had been easy enough to follow Milraud to the gallery. He had left the hotel half an hour ago, dressed in a white roll-neck sweater and a grey tweed jacket. He had walked, without looking around, straight down Unter den Linden, then fifty metres along a side street to the Schweiber Collection. With two teams of three on his tail, there had been no chance of losing him, and with the museum busy but not too crowded, it was simple enough to keep tabs on the man as he wandered through the ground-floor rooms.

He had been in the building over half an hour now, and there had seemed no particular rhyme or reason to his progress. He had looked at paintings and porcelain and classical sculptures. To Anspach’s experienced eye, he seemed to be killing time rather than appreciating the objects.

But the Corot was holding his attention far longer than anything else had. Was he waiting for someone? Was this the meeting point? Anspach edged into the next gallery, from where he could get a wider view of the room where Milraud stood.

He noticed the black man as soon as he walked into Milraud’s gallery. Berlin was full of students from Africa, but this man was no student – he was tall, slim and beautifully dressed in a tailored grey wool suit, a cream silk shirt, and a tie. The fact that he was probably the only man in the gallery wearing a tie would have made it remarkable enough, but this was clearly a designer tie, broad, silky, with a brightly coloured pattern. His figure was elegant but his height and broad shoulders suggested there was strength behind the smooth façade.

The man didn’t glance in Milraud’s direction; he moved towards the far wall, where a group of young Chinese tourists stood giggling in front of a large nude. As Anspach watched, he saw Beckerman stroll in from the other gallery; he had joined the back of a tour group that gathered briefly at the Corot before moving in Anspach’s direction. The group, with Beckerman in tow, walked into the gallery where Anspach stood and gathered at another picture.

Anspach glanced again in Milraud’s direction. The Chinese had moved on from the nude, but where was the black man? Then he spotted him; he had been hidden by another group listening to an English-speaking guide. Now he walked up to the Corot and stood next to Milraud, with only a foot or two of space between them. Both were examining the Corot as if they were experts, and when the Frenchman turned his head slightly Anspach could see the two men were talking.

He drew back until he was out of sight, then looking down he said softly into his microphone: ‘We have contact. Newcomer. Black male. One hundred eighty-five centi­metres tall, slim, smart grey suit.’

The two men stayed standing, side by side, until suddenly the black man turned and walked out of the room. Milraud waited a few minutes then left the room too, going quickly towards the museum’s exit. As he left the building he headed off in the direction of his hotel, watched by Anspach, who had joined Dimitz in an unmarked car parked in the car park outside the building. Three spaces away a second car was parked containing two more officers of the BfV; a third team member was busy buying a newspaper from a kiosk outside the entrance of the museum.

‘We’ll take the Newcomer; you take the main man,’ ordered Anspach on the car’s radio. ‘When you’ve housed him at the hotel, come and help us. If he goes somewhere else, stick with him.’

Anspach settled down to wait for the black man he’d labelled Newcomer, and a few minutes later he emerged, with Beckerman fifteen metres behind him, examining a map of Berlin with apparent concentration. Anspach waited until Newcomer had walked a couple of hundred metres away from Unter den Linden, towards a shopping district, busy on a Saturday morning. When it got hard to see him in the crowd on the pavements, Anspach nodded at Dimitz, who started up the car and drove in the direction their target had gone. They could see Beckerman, struggling to keep up with Newcomer, who was striding quickly past the shops as if on his way to keep an urgent appointment.

They drove past both men, and Dimitz pulled up, just short of a pedestrian-only area. Anspach hopped out, waved to Dimitz as if to thank him for the lift, and walked swiftly into Nadelhoff’s department store, an ­old-fashioned emporium that was adjusting badly to its new concrete and glass quarters. Inside he loitered on the ground floor, looking at men’s shirts near the front windows, waiting for Newcomer to walk past. When he did, Anspach abandoned the shirts and left Nadelhoff’s, just in time to see his target disappear through the swing doors of a shopping centre – six stories of small independent shops known collectively as the Boutique Mall. Whoever this elegant black man was, he seemed to know his way around this part of Berlin.

Anspach spoke into the mike under his lapel. ‘He’s gone into the Boutique Mall. I’ll try and keep with him in there; park the car and come round to cover the rear entrance. Beckerman, watch the front. Control: get the other team over here as soon as they’ve seen their target home.’

Anspach spotted his target easily enough as soon as he went into the Mall. He was in a record shop on the ground floor, leafing through CDs. Anspach walked past and went into a shop opposite; from there he could see the door of the record shop.

He was beginning to feel desperately exposed but he didn’t want to call in either of the other two to take his place for fear of leaving the exits unmonitored. The black man was taking his time – or was he killing time? He had twice looked at his watch but he went on flipping through CDs.

Then he moved, suddenly and quickly, heading straight for the atrium in the centre of the Mall. If he had clocked Anspach he didn’t show it; he walked fast, looking straight ahead, and by the time Anspach was out of the shop, he had crossed the atrium and was striding down the aisle leading to the rear exit.

‘Dimitz, target coming your way. He’s yours,’ he said into his mike. He was hanging back now to avoid detection if his target should look back. He gave it a good sixty seconds, then said into his mike, ‘Have you got him?’

The reply was a grunt.

‘Which way is he going?’

‘He’s not “going”. The bastard’s just standing on the kerb.’

‘Any cabs around?’

‘No. If he wanted one there’s a taxi rank that he walked right past.’

So what was he doing? Waiting to see if he was being tailed? Possibly, but there were better ways to shake off surveillance, or even just to see if it was there. Waiting in one spot wouldn’t do the trick, since the watchers didn’t have to show themselves.

Anspach decided he should risk a closer look. He had reached the rear entrance and could see the black man now, across the street, staring into the window of a women’s shoe shop. It seemed contrived, unnatural. Was he using the window to spot surveillance? Anspach had a premonition. ‘Dimitz, quick get the car.’

‘I’m in it already. Just round the corner.’

‘Come and pick me up.’

But it was too late. There was a whoosh of an approaching car – a black Mercedes limousine, with tinted windows – the screech of brakes, and in an instant the black man had disappeared into the back seat, slamming the door behind him. The Mercedes executed a three-point turn at the expert hands of an invisible driver, then accelerated away down the street.

By then Anspach had his phone in his hand, and its camera snapped and snapped again. ‘Dimitz, where the hell are you?’ he shouted into his mike, not caring now if he was overheard.

‘I’m stuck. There’s a rubbish truck in front of me and I can’t get round.’