“Lecture me. Seven hours with the Ice Queen, and now a lecture.”
Greene smiled again. “You like me, John.” She kept her eyes on the distant doorway. “I’m a pain in your butt, too young for you to have, too equal for you to control. But I’m good, and you like me.”
De Vizio did not answer, although he made a sound as if he had just stepped in the horse droppings of a mounted patrol.
“I like you too,” Greene continued. “You’re just still mad because I pinned you in hand-to-hand.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! That’s ancient history. You pinned me?”
“I did. Are you going to say now that you let me?”
“I had a fucking hangover the size of the Goodyear blimp.”
“Nevertheless.” Greene shrugged. “It’s all an ego thing.”
“Hunh.” De Vizio struggled with the cuff of his parka, trying to find his watch. “Goddamn FBI psychology horseshit,” he mumbled as he peered down at the luminous dial. “How much longer on this damned bore?”
Greene glanced at him, then quickly refocused on the objective. Jack Buchanan had briefed the TTF teams on the importance of snatching just one human link in Martina Klump’s network. Her hijacking of the navy’s missile was no longer fresh, and it was confirmed that she had escaped the country with it. But it was also suspected that at least two members of her cell remained on U.S. soil, and her mother resided in the rest home just yards away. The terrorist ambush had been hushed up, no media were on it, and Jill knew that if she and John got lucky, the commendations would be issued quietly in the Director’s office. Still, it would be quite a feather. . . . How much longer?
“Until we catch the motherfuckers,” Greene suddenly growled.
De Vizio slowly turned to her. Greene never talked that way, and she returned his amazed look with a demure smile and a shrug.
“Now I’m starting to like you,” he said.
A light rapping on de Vizio’s window caused both officers to reach instinctively for their S & Ws. Yet they did not draw the weapons, their hands restrained by that nether zone of the brain where decisions teeter at the edge of fate. Friend or foe? Innocent bystander or cop-killer?
The man outside was not particularly threatening in appearance. He was clean shaven, wore a black watch cap, and was shifting from foot to foot in the cold. Even before he briefly opened his army field jacket to show the shield pinned to his sweater, de Vizio had decided: One of us.
The detective lowered his window halfway and offered a caustic greeting.
“If you’re lookin’ for a hot meal, you’re out of luck, pal. . . . Ice coffee we can give you.”
The man bent and smiled. “Have no fear, your relief is here.”
Greene leaned toward the driver’s side and looked up. “Do I know you?” she asked, preventing de Visio from uttering his common challenge of “Who the fuck are you?”
“Jim Sprengel.” The man offered an ID wallet over the glass. “We’re not with TTF. We’re up from E Street.” The FBI’s administrative headquarters occupied a full block in Washington between E and Pennsylvania, but few agents actually worked out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. “E Street” was just a cryptic mode of identification.
Sprengel glanced over his shoulder, and Jill Greene followed the gesture, spotting an old Chevy Malibu with District of Columbia plates double-parked a few car lengths back. Outside the tan car, a small figure in winter gear leaned back against the fender, arms folded. It appeared to be a woman, confirmed when she waved briefly and exposed a nylon belly pouch, the mode of pistol carry in vogue for female FBI undercovers.
De Vizio took Sprengel’s ID, glanced at it, and handed it back.
“Buchanan wants all you people to come in,” said Sprengel. “We’re just picking up the slack tonight.”
The mention of Jack Buchanan’s name settled most of the doubts in de Vizio’s and Greene’s minds. Still, it was not SOP for them to be replaced by non-TTF agents.
“We didn’t hear anything.” De Vizio glanced down at the Motorola beneath the dash.
“So check it out,” said Sprengel with some impatience. “We’d like to get off the street and hunker down. It’s a bitch out here.”
Greene gestured at the transceiver, and de Vizio reached under the dash, unhooked the mike, and rested it on the lower half of the steering wheel—this little gathering was blatant enough without him actually sticking a mike in his face. He pressed the transmit button and looked at Sprengel as he spoke.
“Teflon One to Base.”
He waited, but the only reply was a burst of heavy static. He tried again.
“Teflon One to Base. Do you copy? Over.”
Again there was a slight pause, then a longer burst of static in response. It sounded like the TTF dispatcher was trying to reply, but the voice was completely obscured.
“Fucking technology.” De Vizio jammed the mike back into its slot. “Why don’t they just issue kite string and paper cups.”
Sprengel peered at the useless piece of equipment, then looked at the TTF members as if they were street cops with rust on their revolvers. He straightened up.
“Tell you what,” he said. “No skin off my nose. You can sit here if you want to, but we’re picking this up.”
He turned and walked back toward the Malibu. De Vizio closed the window.
“Well, what do you think?” Jill Greene asked.
“All you Bureau types got poles up your asses.”
“About going in, John.”
“Oh.” De Vizio drummed on the steering wheel. “We could find a pay phone.”
“Let’s.”
The detective looked at his watch again. “Make you a deal,” he said. “We were supposed to go another hour. Let’s ride over to Mumbles, grab something hot, then call in. Everything’s kosher, we hit the FDR Drive and pop the cherry on the roof.” He grinned slyly at his partner, wondering if she would go for it. “We can be downtown in ten minutes flat.”
Greene regarded him as if he were a fat little devil perched on her shoulder. She was always by the book, but his remark about anal agents had hit home. The small detour sounded all right. After all, there were people from Washington on site.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“You kidding?”
“Before I change my mind.”
De Vizio started the Jeep. He looked back at the Malibu. Its headlights flashed once as it rolled toward his spot.
“French onion soup,” he murmured as he pulled away. “Irish coffee.” He could feel Greene smiling next to him as she flipped her seat lever and straightened up. “And you can tell me all about the Mistress Race, Eva Braun.”
Greene punched him in the shoulder. . . .
Sprengel snuggled the Malibu up to the curb, but he did not kill the engine, and the Chevy’s blowers held the interior at a comfortable fifty degrees. Those TTF people had good discipline, freezing their butts off like Russian snipers, refusing to show even a wisp of exhaust fumes. He almost felt guilty about the black box in his pocket, a close-range jammer that emitted hard noise on their UHF frequency, turning their reception to vegetable soup. But their efforts were irrelevant. He already knew the precise location of Klump’s two remaining HOGs, and there was no chance of their showing up here tonight.
He looked over at the small woman beside him. She pulled off her wool ski hat, shook out her short brown hair, and unzipped her coverall. Lane’s face was bony and masculine, but she had a voice that could have made big bucks for one of those phone sex outfits. She reached down between her feet and unzipped a long gym bag.
First, she pulled a full-size computer keyboard onto her lap, its cord unattached. Next, she came up with a Panasonic mobile cellular, placed it on the seat between herself and Sprengel, and plugged the power cable into the car’s cigarette lighter. She removed a small headset with a boom mike from a vinyl case, pulled the unit onto her head, and inserted the jack into the base of the cellular. Finally, she took out a
small clipboard with a flexible minilamp, and a hand-held Uniden transceiver. She looked over at Sprengel.
“Clear?” she asked.
He was scanning the far corner of Eighty-ninth and Third, where the red taillights of the Cherokee had swept around to the left. “They’re gone.”
Lane turned the power knob on the Uniden and brought it to her mouth. “Go, Ranger.”
Half a minute passed, then headlights filled the Malibu with glare as a heavy square ambulance with Cabrini Medical Center printed on its flank cruised by and stopped at the foot of the Edelweiss’s entrance. The vehicle’s rear doors opened and a nurse in full whites and a long gray overcoat dropped to the pavement. She reached into the green cavern of the truck and pulled out a collapsed wheelchair.
From the passenger side of the ambulance cab, a tall man placed his polished shoes on the street and stood up. He was wearing a dark suit, a blue cashmere topcoat, and a fedora. A stethoscope glinted from the sides of his shirt collar, and he carried a black physician’s bag. He closed the door, looked back up the street at the Malibu, and touched the brim of his hat.
The doctor joined the nurse at the sidewalk, helping her unfold the wheelchair. Then he mounted the stairway of the rest home, pressed the doorbell, and raised his black bag for the benefit of someone inside. The door buzzed open.
Inside the Malibu, Lane spoke into the walkie-talkie.
“Trigger Gamma, this is Alpha. Ranger is in.”
She received two short clicks in reply. Then she hit the power button on the Panasonic, and the telephone’s display glowed lime green. . . .
Closer to midtown Manhattan, Dr. Ernst Hoffmeyer’s private practice was situated on the north side of Sixty-sixth Street between Park and Madison avenues. The doctor had gone home for the day, but his receptionist stayed on duty until eight o’clock. Because of Hoffmeyer’s kindly demeanor and native, fluent German, many of his patients were elderly immigrants from the old country.
At the corner of Park and Sixty-sixth, a NYNEX telephone truck was parked next to an open manhole, the wide mouth protected from careless pedestrians by a half-circle of iron fence and a MEN WORKING sign. On the tailgate of the truck sat a young man wearing a white hard hat and bundled up like the Pillsbury Doughboy. He glanced down occasionally into the hole, but mostly he watched the street with the unblinking gaze of a stagecoach shotgun rider.
Down in the hole, a second man, wearing a miner’s helmet with a beam lantern, replaced his own Uniden in its holster, then bent to a thick trunk of colored wires. It had taken him nearly two hours to find the Hoffmeyer leads, but he had them now, tagged and slightly stripped. He carefully clipped two alligators to them, checked the dial tone with his orange handset, then switched the connection to a cellular similar to Lane’s but with a call-forwarding modification not yet commercially available. He hit the power button on the unit and looked at his watch. The cellular battery would drain off very quickly in this cold.
The physician who approached the reception desk of the Edelweiss was not Ernst Hoffmeyer, nor was he pretending to be. In fact, he had never met the man who was regarded by the Edelweiss residents as not only their doctor but their friend and confidant. This man presented his credentials as Dr. Peter Kradjel, a member of the cardiovascular staff at Cabrini.
“Good evening.” He offered his hospital ID card to the rather cadaverous man behind the desk. “We are here for Mrs. Katharina Oberst.”
“Guten Abend,” the elderly watchman responded reflexively. He looked at the card and quickly handed it back. “Frau Oberst?” He rose halfway from his chair, peering over the counter at the wheelchair. The nurse smiled at him, and he sat back down. “She did not call down to me. Is she ill, Dr . . . ?”
“Kradjel.”
“Ja, excuse me. Dr. Kradjel.” The watchman dropped his eyes to his visitor’s wide shoulders, his muscular physique. These middle-aged American professionals, spending so much time in gymnasiums. So undignified.
“It’s not an emergency,” said Kradjel. “She is scheduled for some tests, a cardio sonogram, und so weiter.”
“Ahh.” The watchman’s eyes lit up. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
“Ein Bißen.” Kradjel smiled.
“Sehr gut, Herr Doktor,” said the watchman. But he switched back to English, for it would not be proper to embarrass the physician if his linguistic talents were only minimal. “You will excuse my hesitation, but—”
“Of course.” Kradjel fished inside his coat and produced a triplicate form on Cabrini letterhead, a test schedule with Katharina Oberst’s name clearly delineated.
The watchman peered at the paperwork, even as he waved a hand as if such proof was unnecessary, “Ja, thank you.” Still, he hesitated. He had worked for the civil service in Bonn for thirty years, and any deviation from procedure was hard for him to abide. He shifted uncomfortably. “I have no doubt about the tests, Herr Doktor. Absolutely no doubts. However . . .”
“You mean Dr. Hoffmeyer did not inform you?”
The watchman sagged with relief. “Ja, that is so! The doctor always notifies us of any such movements.”
“Well, please,” said Kradjel with grace and patience. “Why don’t you call his office?”
“You would not mind?”
“Of course not.” The physician gestured toward the old desk telephone.
“A moment, ja?” The watchman scraped a fingernail along a list taped to the countertop, and dialed.
In Hoffmeyer’s office on Sixty-sixth street, the telephone did not ring. The receptionist was wondering why the damned switchboard had suddenly stopped lighting up like a Christmas tree, but she welcomed the respite and was flipping through a copy of Vogue.
In the freezing utility tunnel below the street, the telephone man’s cellular also did not ring, but its LED blinked for the fifth time in as many minutes. He crossed his raw fingers, hoping this was the one.
Inside the Malibu, the cellular phone rang once again, its warble jarring because Sprengel had turned off the engine and the heater. Lane had already taken five calls from Hoffmeyer’s patients and noted the messages on her pad. She threw her headset switch and began typing rapidly on the computer keyboard, affording the proper background ambience.
“Dr. Hoffmeyer’s office.”
“Ja, good evening. This is Mr. Franz at the Edelweiss Rest Home.”
“How can I help you?” Lane sounded like a harried receptionist as she turned to Sprengel and nodded.
“Uh, we have a gentleman here,” said the watchman. “A Dr. Kradjel from the Cabrini hospital.”
“Dr. Hoffmeyer is in with a patient.” Lane’s tone suggested that it would not be wise to interrupt her boss. “Does he need to speak with him?”
“No, no, my dear!” the watchman sputtered. “Dr. Kradjel is here to take Frau Oberst to the hospital for some tests.”
“Katharina Oberst?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Just one minute.” Lane wrapped the small boom mike in the palm of her hand, looked over at Sprengel, and smiled. Sprengel held up a hand and, like a television-studio floor manager, waved it forward at her, each time showing one less finger as he mouthed, “Four, three, two, one.”
Lane freed the mike.
“Dr. Hoffmeyer says to please release Mrs. Oberst into Kradjel’s care immediately.”
“Yes! Of course!” The watchman responded as only a Prussian can.
“And he says to thank you for your vigilance.”
“Thank you, madam. Good evening.”
“ ’Bye now.”
Lane stabbed the power button on the Panasonic, and the system went dead. Then she slumped back in the seat and exhaled one long breath. But she quickly recovered and picked up the Uniden.
“Trigger Gamma, this is Alpha. Contact is Go. Break it off.”
She was answered by three mike clicks as the telephone man freed Hoffmeyer’s line. Now she reactivated the Panasonic, unplugged her headset, and began to dial Hoffmeyer’
s receptionist. She and Sprengel would take turns until they had duplicated the intercepted calls. She squinted at her clipboard.
“Number one was a man calling for his wife.” Lane grinned at her partner. “She has a vaginal infection.”
“That I can handle,” said Sprengel as he took the phone. . . .
Secure in the knowledge that he had followed procedure, the watchman had escorted Dr. Kradjel and his nurse to the elevator and returned to his station. He was not really surprised that Frau Oberst was experiencing heart trouble. No doubt the recent incident with that young woman, the shooting and the police, had shaken her up. It had certainly set the ancient tongues wagging throughout the rest home. As for Franz, he preferred the mundane, regular evenings when the residents were in bed by nine and he could work on his stamp collection.
The elevator opened and the nurse emerged, steering the wheelchair straight for the door. Frau Oberst’s little form looked no larger than an oversized teddy bear, covered with a thick wool blanket, a large beret with a pearl stickpin pulled jauntily over her white curls. The doctor followed close behind, and he turned to the watchman as he passed.
“Thank you for your help,” he said. “We’ll have her back day after tomorrow.”
“My pleasure.” The watchman waved at his departing resident. “Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Oberst! Viel Glück!”
The doctor held the door as the nurse deftly spun the wheelchair and backed through. Frau Oberst was smiling, but she did not wave back at Franz, for she was busy unwrapping one of those small chocolate candy bottles, the kind that are filled with brandy. She seemed to have a whole box of them on her lap.
The ambulance driver bounded up the steps to help the nurse with the wheelchair.
“You two got it?” the doctor asked as the pair gently eased Frau Oberst down.
“No problem.” The nurse and the driver said simultaneously, the clouds of breath puffing from their mouths.
The doctor walked around to the ambulance cab and got in. He took off his gloves and rubbed his hands together, then reached down to a trauma box, popped open the lid, and picked out a small Uniden identical to Lane’s.
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