فصل 09

CHAPTER NINE

The safe house

Hiro looked inside the car. ‘Yes?’ he said. He was too surprised to say anything else.

‘My name is Karl Meier,’ the man went on. He was very smartly dressed. ‘I work for the Bundesnachrichtendienst. The BND is a department of the German police. Foreign intelligence. We need to talk to you. Get in, please.’

At the same moment the driver of the car climbed out. His head was shaved and he wore a black leather jacket. He looked very tough. He opened the back door for Hiro.

Hiro felt his heart beat fast. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. He was feeling very nervous, not sure if he should get in, but the driver put his hand on Hiro’s shoulder. Hiro climbed into the car next to Karl Meier. Almost immediately, the driver banged the door shut, got in the front and the car pulled away. It had all happened so quickly, Hiro couldn’t think.

‘Don’t worry, my friend,’ Meier said. ‘You’re quite safe with us.’ He put out his hand. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Adachi. You’re a very brave young man.’

Hiro shook the man’s hand. The car had already left Unter den Linden and was racing through the streets. Hiro saw the driver watching him in the mirror. He had a long cut on his face.

‘Where are we going?’ Hiro asked Karl Meier.

‘Just somewhere we can talk more quietly, Mr Adachi.’ The man gave a strange smile. In the car mirror, Hiro saw the driver smile, too. Hiro began to feel uncomfortable. How could the police have known where he was? He wished he hadn’t got into the car now. Why hadn’t one of the men shown him a police card or something?

The car raced on. No one spoke. Hiro had no idea where they were.

At last Hiro managed to find his voice. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ he said with a cough.

Meier didn’t look at him. ‘We’ve been following you for some time,’ he said quietly.

Hiro saw the driver smile once again.

‘You mean since I went to the police station this morning?’ Hiro asked.

Meier looked round at that. He watched Hiro for a moment or two, then nodded very gently. ‘Yes, that’s right. There are some things you said which we want to double-check.’

Hiro did his best to relax. At least he had an explanation now for how they’d picked him up.

At last they turned into a small street and drove round to the back of a large building. Hiro wasn’t sure if it was offices or flats. Then the car pulled over the pavement and went down into an underground car park. The car headlights shone brightly in the darkness. Hiro felt a little sick.

They came to a stop opposite a lift. Immediately, the driver got out and told Hiro to follow him. Hiro climbed out of the car and a moment later, Meier joined them.

‘This is what we call a “safe house”,’ Meier said. ‘We use it for interviews, among other things. Naturally, we can’t take most people to our head office. Please follow me.’

Meier led the way over to the lift, pressed a button on the wall and the doors opened immediately. The three of them went inside. It was dirty and smelly. An empty beer can was lying on the floor. With a tired look, Meier kicked it away.

The lift went slowly up, then the doors opened. When they stepped out there were two brown doors in front of them, a long corridor leading off to the right, and stairs up and down.

The driver took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door on the left, then Meier led the way inside. Hiro relaxed a little when he saw it was a simple flat. There was a bedroom and bathroom off to one side of the hall, a kitchen directly ahead and a lounge to the right. They went into the lounge and Meier turned on the light. There was very little furniture: a sofa and two armchairs, a coffee table, a TV, but it seemed no one lived there. There were no pictures on the wall, and there was nothing very warm about the room. Meier sat in one of the armchairs.

‘Please have a seat,’ he said pointing to the sofa. ‘Would you like a coffee, perhaps?’ he added.

‘No, thank you,’ Hiro answered.

Meier spoke quickly in German to the driver, who went off into the kitchen. Hiro didn’t like the feeling in the room. It was cold and strange.

Meier seemed in a hurry to start. ‘So, when you went to the police this morning, the ordinary police, that is-‘

‘I thought they hadn’t believed me,’ Hiro broke in.

Meier’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, you’re right. They’re very stupid people. The truth is that your report was picked up on our computer. We acted immediately.’

‘I see,’ Hiro answered, a little uncertainly.

Meier looked uncomfortable. ‘Right, now it’s important that you tell me in your own words what you told the ordinary police. You told them about the old man on the train, of course. And what did you tell them about the messages that you read on his phone?’ Meier was sitting forward now and looking very closely at Hiro. Hiro didn’t answer. This is all wrong, he thought. The men are wrong, the room is wrong, the questions are wrong. He didn’t know what to do.

‘So?’ said Meier impatiently.

Hiro looked at the man. ‘I’m sorry. Is there a toilet I could use, please?’

Meier looked annoyed for a moment, then seemed to relax. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’ll show you.’

‘Thank you,’ Hiro replied.

Meier led Hiro out of the room and opened the bathroom door for him. Hiro went in and closed the door. He heard Meier go off into the kitchen and start talking to the driver. Hiro sat on the edge of the bath and put his head in his hands. He had to think. ‘These men aren’t real policemen, or foreign intelligence,’ he said to himself. ‘They must be friends of the Shark. Perhaps they followed me from the Brandenburg Gate. Yes, that must be it! Maybe the Shark had been at the Gate earlier. He’d met these men there. When they saw me they decided to follow me and pick me up. So what are they going to do with me now?’

Hiro looked around. He had to escape. There was no way out of the bathroom except through the door. What could he do?

He got up, went over to the door and listened. He could hear Meier talking in German. It sounded as though he had returned to the lounge. Maybe he was talking on the phone.

Hiro’s brain was racing. He thought: ‘They want to be sure what I know.’ That was why Meier was asking the questions and not the Shark - by pretending to be police they hoped to get more information from him. If the Shark asked the questions, Hiro might refuse to talk. But once they’d heard everything, surely they would kill him. ‘It’ll be a shot in the back of the head,’ Hiro told himself. ‘Either that, or a fall from the window, perhaps.’

There was no time to think about it any more. Hiro looked round the bathroom once more. Then he made a decision. He had one chance only. If he was going to escape it had to be now.

He stood by the door.