The Doll’s House by Evelyn Anthony Read Free Book Online Page A

into the small conference room early. He sat at the table. Everything was set up. A screen and video, notepads, pencils at each place, mineral water and cigarettes. A discreet bowl of fresh flowers on the side. Small but impressive. A professional scene set up for people who were supreme professionals.
    Five of them. He’d picked very carefully. His Libyan banker had nodded as he named them, while his wife’s awful nephews slobbered their ice creams.
    Hermann Rilke. That was one to conjure with. Head of the East German Security for the past sixteen years. An expert in counter espionage and interrogation. His success rate among Allied and American agents had been awesome. His name inspired pure terror among his own population. Rilke was a committed Stalinist, the confidant of Honecker, a protégé of Adolph Gorst, his former chief.
    A vicious man who enjoyed inflicting pain. Jan had called him a swine. He could imagine how Jan had hated entertaining him, indulging his perverted appetites. Jan was a good old-fashioned prude at heart.
    Oakham thought of him with affection. Traces of the strict Catholic upbringing remained in him. It was a hellish religion. It never let go completely … He hadn’t been affected by his family’s mild Anglicanism. He didn’t give a damn about Rilke’s private life. Rilke’s skill and availability were what interested him.
    Vassily Zarubin. The brilliant young tactician, the KGB schoolmaster who set their recruits the final exams. He was in his late thirties but his heart was with the iron men of the Soviet past. His father had been a stalwart of the old tyrant, Brezhnev. He was retired and the son had taken his job and done it even better. He played chess at masters level for relaxation.
    Georg Werner, good-looking, sociable, a charming post-war West German diplomat. He’d been a Communist sleeper in the West German Foreign Ministry for the last twenty years.
    Then there was the Israeli, Daniel Ishbav. Oakham had hesitated about him.
    He had worked for Mossad as a specialist in kidnapping. And then taken Syrian money to finance his love of women and gambling. He’d kept both sides going, betraying and counter-betraying to keep the balance till a captured Syrian agent led Mossad to look inside their own ranks. Daniel had got away before they reached him. For two years he had been hiding in Iraq; now Iraq wasn’t safe any more and he had slipped into England via Turkey. His money was running out; Harry knew about him because London had been keeping an eye on him. They didn’t want his specialist skills offered to an organization like the IRA.
    And then, Oakham grinned to himself, the only lady in the happy band of international brothers. Monika Van Heflin. A handsome name for a very handsome lady indeed. The Venus Fly Trap was her nickname, and she enjoyed it so much, she went out and bought herself a plant. So legend said. The sixties had spawned some aberrations among the prosperous middle classes in Holland as well as Germany, Italy and Japan. The children of the affluent and respectable took to murder and subversion, cloaking themselves in a crazed Communism. The Red Brigade had recruited Monika at seventeen. She was a student in Amsterdam, the pretty blonde daughter of a fashionable psychiatrist. She had specialized in killing men after she had slept with them, Monika could bring death and terror to selected targets who were otherwise well protected.
    She was a beautiful woman; Oakham had seen photographs of her. But not recently. The terror groups had dispersed. The leaders had been caught, imprisoned, and were now forgotten. Monika had eased out in time. She had worked for the criminal element in Paris – some said for the French Secret Service itself, and done discreet jobs for the CIA. For the last few years she had lived off the highest level of prostitution, protected by the organizations who had used her. The whisper was that the