He took the black BMW and headed out of the city. It had been overcast and cold since he’d arrived in Berlin, the atmosphere itself possessed of a hollow metallic quality. Now as he drove, the first flakes of snow were falling on the still air. It was early in the year for it, and hard to believe that just a few days before, in Auxerre, it had felt like an Indian summer. Even Sweden had been warmer than this.
Brabham’s place was on a quiet and narrow residential street, tree-lined, the road bordered all the way along with a mixture of hedges, fences and walls. The houses on one side were big, mansions and villas, but on the other side, the shore of the lake, they were more like miniature estates with gabled and tiered manor houses, all of them no doubt described with false modesty by their owners as villas.
He parked up before reaching Brabham’s place. There were other cars parked on the side of the street, so there was nothing conspicuous about him stopping there, and with the dark and the snow settling, he doubted anyone would pay much attention to a figure walking purposefully.
He kept to the far side of the road, and walked right past and kept going. The property was bordered by a fence of metal railings, about six feet high, with a neatly trimmed hedge immediately behind it that was slightly higher. At the entrance, the fence curved inward to the gates, forming a semi-circle, the gates themselves set into stone pillars. And beyond one of the gateposts was the small security lodge, built in the same stone.
Dan noticed cameras on the fence there, but pointed downwards to see anyone waiting to gain access. He could see a light on in the lodge too, though couldn’t see through the window from this angle. The main house, a big old pre-war mansion, was probably another fifty yards back from the lodge, partially obscured by trees and shrubs, no lights visible bar for an ornate porch light next to the main door.
Once he was a decent distance beyond the property, and onto the next which seemed to be separated by a much higher and broader hedgerow, he turned and walked back again to the car. He kept his head down, and not just for effect because the snow was falling harder now, forming a mantle that was already taking the edge off the darkness—that would make it harder to get in unseen.
He noticed that the border on the side nearest the car was a similarly high and thick hedge. He guessed there had to be something else there too, given that the hedge couldn’t extend all the way down to the lake shore. That was probably what they feared most, someone coming in from the neighboring properties or someone coming in off the lake. They probably wouldn’t be expecting him to come in the front.
When he reached the car he noticed that one of the guys he’d killed had left an overcoat in the back seat, and he reached in to grab it, thinking it would make a nice decoy, bundled up and thrown over to set off the motion sensors. But then he spotted a football down on the floor behind the driver seat. He could imagine those two guys throwing the ball to each other in idle moments, dreaming of their quarterback days in high school.
He left the coat but put the ball on the passenger seat, then climbed in and checked that he was ready, that he had enough ammunition, that the laptop was primed and ready to go. He drove on then, until he was alongside the property, and pulled up right next to the fence.
He hit Enter on the laptop, watched as it started the process Josh had promised. He got out of the car and couldn’t help but smile as he kicked the ball at a thirty-degree angle, roughly over the roof of the lodge, towards the far boundary where he was certain he heard it smack into the hedge and bounce down onto the lawn. That would do it.
He was about to move when he heard a door open somewhere ahead of him, and then a voice, clear on the snowy air. “Okay, okay, I’ll check, but I guarantee it’s a fault.”
The door closed, but a second later it opened again, and a different voice called out, “Teddy?” When he got no reply he said to himself, but still audible, “Jesus, what a mess.” And once more the door closed.
Dan guessed the second guy had called out to let Teddy know the cameras had also gone down. Whatever the case, he’d struck lucky with the ball. He ran up the front of the car now, onto the roof and then over the fence and hedge, landing on the snow-covered lawn. He recovered, turned and sprinted toward the lodge, but stopped short.
The door was heavy duty, and he could see from here that it had a keypad. He’d probably have to wait for Teddy to come back, but that solution raised problems of its own. If Teddy came back soon he’d see Dan’s footprints in the snow. If he didn’t, if he decided to walk the boundary, Dan could be left sitting there for more than the ten minutes he had before the cameras came back online.
The only thing Dan had in his favor was that he knew another motion sensor had gone off, registering his arrival over the fence. Even if the guy in the lodge didn’t pay much credence to it, he’d want Teddy to check it out.