The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin by Chris Ewan Read Free Book Online Page B

busy. The clientele seemed to be a mixture of businesspeople and tourists. I heard a variety of accents and languages. Some Dutch. Some French. A good deal of German. And a smattering of English.
    I accompanied Victoria to a red leather stool at the bar. “Order me a mineral water,” I told her. “And anything you’d like to eat or drink. Anything at all. I’ll settle the bill when I get back.”
    “Generous,” she muttered.
    “Listen, can we be friends again?”
    She glared at me so savagely that I felt compelled to pat myself down and check for injuries.
    “How about acquaintances?”
    “Just go, Charlie. Give me some space.”
    I could tell there wasn’t much point saying anything more, so I quit while I was very definitely behind, and left the bar. On my way out, I raised Victoria’s mobile to my ear and embarked on a tedious conversation with a colleague back in London. The colleague didn’t exist, and neither, for that matter, did the phone call, but the act was enough to get me past the staff in reception without my presence being questioned, and from there I stepped inside an elevator and traveled up to the first floor.
    A sign inside the carriage had informed me that the hotel occupied the site of the former Siemens factory, and the interior design retained a number of nods to the building’s industrial past. There was an old chunk of machinery in a glass case outside the elevator doors. The cast-iron radiators in the hallway were painted a metallic brown and reminded me of the heating system in my old boarding school. The corridor windows were giant sash units with multiple panes, and the stairways were workmanlike structures with concrete treads.
    But the overall impression was strikingly modern. The carpet was a deep purple in color, inlaid with bold floral patterns. The walls were painted off-white and decorated with long German phrases in a flowing black script. The doors to the hotel rooms were made of sleek, dark wood, with aluminum fittings. And the information signs and room numbers were etched onto squares of jauntily colored plastic, backlit by electric bulbs.
    Room 134 was at the far end of the corridor. According to Freddy’s text, it was the temporary home of a lady by the name of Jane Parker, who was in residence at the hotel during a short-term posting in Berlin. Freddy’s message had concluded with the information that she was a security consultant, on assignment from London. The idea that a security specialist could have stolen something of value from the office of the British ambassador seemed a bit iffy to me, but since Freddy was the guy calling the shots (not to mention paying for them), and since he’d insisted that the mystery item had been stolen, I was going to have to go ahead and search her belongings.
    First, though, I knocked.
    It was a pretty timid knock. I wanted it to be just loud enough to be heard from the inside but not so loud as to draw the attention of a guest in an adjoining room.
    There was no response, but that was hardly conclusive, so I held my breath for a moment and knocked again. I even cleared my throat and spoke in a low, fast voice.
    “Room service.”
    On reflection, it was just about the dumbest thing I could have said. If there was somebody inside and they answered the door, it was going to strike them as pretty odd if they hadn’t ordered any room service. And it was going to seem even stranger if they opened their door to find me standing there in my soggy raincoat, drenched jeans, and scummy baseball trainers, without a food cart or a serving tray.
    Lucky, then, that my knock went unanswered, and after a short pause to recover my senses and remind myself that now really wasn’t the time to be a total moron, I turned my attention to the next obstacle in my way—the key card entry system.
    It goes without saying that there are several ways to defeat a magnetic card reader, and naturally enough, the best way of all is to have the right key.