Close Call

Chapter 16

Anspach strode round the corner into a caco­phony of car horns. Dimitz was sitting at the wheel of his car, at the head of a line of stationary cars, all blowing their horns at the garbage truck blocking their way.

‘What in heaven’s name is going on?’ shouted Anspach.

‘The driver’s in that café and he won’t come out.’

‘I’ll get him out fast enough,’ said Anspach, and headed into the café waving a card identifying him as on special government business. In seconds he was out again, shouting at a couple of men in yellow jackets who had come out of the café. They got into the rubbish truck and drove it off up the street. By then Beckerman had joined his colleagues in the car.

‘I’ve passed the registration number of the Mercedes to Control and he’s asking the traffic police to look out for it,’ said Anspach. ‘We’ve got no reason to stop him, unless Traffic can get them for exceeding the speed limit, but at least we should get a fix on where he’s going.’

‘I got some good photographs of both of them in the gallery,’ said Beckerman. ‘I swear that was no chance meeting. They were discussing something. It was an RV.’

‘Yeah. And I think that black fellow clocked us, at least by the end. That was a very smooth getaway,’ added Anspach.

‘Where to, boss?’ asked Dimitz.

Anspach snorted. ‘God knows. We’ll join up with the other team and hope Traffic get lucky.’

And they did – up to a point. Ten minutes later a report came in that a traffic patrol car had spotted the Mercedes heading north on the E26 near Westend. Unfortunately the patrol car had been going in the other direction.

A quick conference with Control sent both teams off to Tegel airport, where the BfV officers and the police and immigration officials were all alerted to look out for a tall, elegantly dressed black man, and to note his passport details and where he was heading.

Tegel was crowded when Anspach and his team arrived. They had to push past long queues of passengers at the departure desks in the hexagonal International Terminal A to reach the office where the airport team had their base. There was no news of their target. He had not been observed going through security or passport checks at Departure and no sightings of the Mercedes had been reported by police outside the terminal.

But Anspach wasn’t going to give up; he found a ticketing supervisor, and with the man by his side, slowly worked his way along the lines of check-in desks – British Airways, Lufthansa, Delta and all the other airlines running international flights from the airport, showing the desk clerks the clearest picture he had of the dozens taken by Beckerman in the Schweiber Museum. As each desk clerk peered at the tiny image on the mobile phone’s screen they responded with a shake of the head.

As he was working his way along the desks he heard Beckerman’s voice through his earpiece say, ‘They’ve seen the car at Terminal D.’

‘What’s Terminal D?’ he asked the supervisor, who was still with him.

‘It’s Air Berlin – domestic flights.’

He looked at the man, puzzled. ‘Domestic flights?’ Surely their target wasn’t going somewhere else in Germany.

The man added, ‘Private jets use it as well.’

‘How do I get there?’

‘Not easily. There’s a bus…’ the man started to explain, but Anspach was already racing for the terminal doors, shouting into his mike for Beckerman to pick him up.

At Terminal D they were directed to the far end of the departures hall. There they found one small counter manned by a middle-aged woman in a blue suit and forage cap who greeted them with a smile.

‘Guten Tag,’ she said, ‘and how may I help you today?’

‘Have you seen this man?’ asked Anspach, thrusting the mobile phone in front of her face.

Taken aback, the woman paused. ‘Our clients expect confidentiality, Herr…?’

‘Anspach.’ He brought out his card – official-looking, special government business, it breathed authority.

The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Yes, I have seen this gentleman.’

‘Where is he flying to?’

‘Rotterdam.’

‘When is he leaving?’

She looked at Anspach with mild surprise. ‘His plane took off ten minutes ago.’