LACKING VIRTUES

by Thomas Kirkwood

  And Walter J. Claussen of Schenectady, N.Y., had passed away on Christmas Eve, 1989, in the home in which he had lived since coming to the States in 1947.

  The other Walter Claussens, those born in this country, were too young to be the man they were looking for.

  Sophie sat back in her chair and sighed. There were a lot of combinations of initials to search, perhaps as many as a hundred. And search them she would. She only wished she wasn’t so tired – and the software wasn’t so picky.

  In the anteroom, she could hear the first salvos of a verbal artillery duel. She went out and surprised Steven and Monique, who were battling over a plump chocolate pastry Monique had brought back from the pâtisserie.

  Sophie claimed the prize for herself, then sent Monique, who was in an even worse mood than usual, out for more.

  “You look terrific, darling,” Sophie told Steven when they were alone. “Feeling okay?”

  “Not bad, just hungry. Why don’t you fire that bitch?”

  “Now, now, not everyone can be as charming as Nicole. Come in here. We’ll share this monument to sugar and cholesterol and your friend will never know.”

  “Friend, my ass. I’d like to set her up with Michelet.”

  “A pleasant thought. Did you drop by your place?”

  “Yep. Showered and dressed in there. No sign of trouble.”

  “That’s good.”

  Steven followed her into her sanctum sanctorum.

  He wiped his mouth and stared wide-eyed at the computer screen. “Hey, there he is! Walter J. Claussen! How did you find him?”

  She sat on her piano bench, the seat she used when she was at the computer. “Unfortunately, Steven, the name you are looking at belongs to a person of no relevance to us. Either the software missed our man, which is improbable, or his official first name is not Walter. This new search program is what my geeks call ‘first name specific.’ If we simply search Claussen, we come up with thousands of entries, pickles included. Of course, the most likely possibility is that he went by another name altogether while he was in the States.”

  Steven leaned close to the screen, careful not to disturb the faxes that curled like bleached tropical leaves around the monitor. “Did you look for Mrs. Claussen?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Well, we should give it a try while you’re doing the obituary search. I know he married an American woman. I heard Haussmann ask if she could present a danger. Delors said, ‘No, because she’s dead, died just before he moved back to Germany.’”

  “You didn’t tell me that, Steven.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “Don’t worry about it. No harm done. You’ve had a thing or two on your mind. Think hard. Did Delors mentioned the woman by name?”

  “Just Claussen’s wife.”

  “What about the year of her death?”

  “Sort of. He said it was around the time of reunification. Do you know when that was?”

  “Yes, Steven, and so should you. We’ll check 1990 for a dead Mrs. Claussen who stands out in some weird way. Maybe we’ll get lucky – if he called himself Claussen and if she took his name.”

  She started the search.

  “What can I do?” Steven asked.

  “I think I heard Monique come in. You can hone your already impressive skills by persuading her to prepare us some coffee. If that fails dispose of her any way you wish and make the coffee yourself. I had the most dreadful brew at the embassy.”

  “You’ve been to the embassy already? Jesus, Sophie, I thought you’d gone back to bed.”

  “I might as well have. I’ll tell you about that fiasco later.”

  He just stood there staring at her.

  “Steven – ”

  ”Yes?”

  “I know you’re tired too, but if you don’t bring me coffee soon, my brain will to fall into an eternal slumber.”

  When he went out, Sophie broadened her obituary search to include all women by the name of Claussen who died in 1989, 1990 or 1991.

  Ingeborg Claussen, Ute Claussen, Käte Claussen . . . Germans, Germans. The wife was supposed to be American. Alice, Jane, Pam, where were all those nice middle-American names she had never been able to escape – until now?

  Well, thought Sophie, maybe this phantom wife did not have a middle-American name. Maybe Claussen had married a German-American. She was going to have to read hundreds of obituaries in search of a clue.

  The computer dug tirelessly while the decibel level of the battle in the anteroom swelled to a crescendo, then gradually began to abate.

  Sophie’s eyes burned with fatigue as she scoured the list of deceased female Claussens.

  Number 37 caught her attention.

  Her name was Rose Claussen.

  Did she want to read all published obituaries of Rose Claussen?

  Damn right she did. The name had a promising cross-cultural ring to it.

  Steven came back into the room just as the text from the Denver Post obituary, dated October 17, 1990, appeared on the screen. Sophie could feel him behind her looking for a place to put down the pastries and coffee. She shoved the remaining mass of papers off the piano bench. He deposited the tray and read over her shoulder.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed as they reached the end. “This time you’ve done it! ‘ . . . survived by her husband, a respected aerospace consultant!’ That’s got to be him, doesn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t have to be, but it could be.” Sophie fed the computer fresh commands; Steven fed her coffee and pastries while she worked.

  “What are you doing?” he asked when she stopped chewing and sipping for a moment.

  “I am looking for a much more detailed account of the automobile accident in which she died. Perhaps Mr. Rose Claussen is mentioned by name. Come sit beside me. You need to preserve your energy for tomorrow. I’ll check out the Rocky Mountain News.”

  “Thanks.”

  He was starting to relax when he felt her body tense. “What do you make of this, Steven? ‘Rose Claussen is thought to have died instantly when the car her husband was driving careened out of control and struck a bridge abutment on I-25 just south of the mousetrap. Hans-Walter Claussen emerged from the accident shaken but unhurt. He was released from University Medical Center this morning. The couple’s 1985 Mercedes was equipped with a driver’s side air bag, which the police credit with saving Claussen’s life.’”

  Steven whistled. “Hans-Walter Claussen. I’ll be damned. He killed her before he went home, didn’t he? He just aimed that big Kraut panzer with a driver’s side air bag at a bridge abutment and said, ‘Aufwiedersehen, honey?’”

  “But is he our man? Let me run the new name.”

  “Good idea.”

  ***

  The search took a long time. Steven had started to daydream. Sophie clapped her hands and he jumped. “I believe we do in fact have our man. Look at that, would you! Page ten of the Seattle Times, November, 1991.”

  She watched his mind come back from wherever it had traveled and read the article over again with him:

  METALTECH TO SHUT DOWN

  Metaltech, the respected aerospace consulting firm, announced today that it will close its doors upon the retirement next month of its founder and general partner, Hans-Walter Claussen.

  Claussen, who emigrated to the United States from Bremen in Western German in 1963 and became a U.S. citizen in 1965, worked as a private consultant in the aerospace industry for 25 years. His firm, which was largely a one-man operation, pioneered modern methods for stress-testing the alloys used in aircraft construction.

  “That’s him!” Steven said after he had gone through the text several times. “That’s gotta be him. It says here ‘West Germany’ but he would never say he came from the East. What now, Sophie?”

  “Hang on a second.” It was 12:20 p.m., getting on lunch time, but still only 6:20 a.m. in Washington. Sophie called the NTSB and got a recording.

  “Well?” Steven asked.

&nb
sp; “We have another two hours and forty minutes before a real person answers. That’s a lot of time.”

  “It sure is. I guess there’s nothing we can do while America wakes up. I think I’ll take a nap.”

  “No! Absolutely not. We’re going to Bonn. There are hourly flights from Charles De Gaulle.”

  “Bonn! That’s in Germany.”

  “So it is. But, Steven, we need to know more about Claussen. If everything were to go our way, a quick visit to his home after he’s been locked up could yield some very interesting material. We’d have to beat the police to the punch. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

  “Yes, but not why we’re going to Germany. Why do we need to go to Germany to find out where Claussen lives? Can’t we do that on the phone?”

  “Perhaps we could. But there are other things I want as well, things I must be there in person to receive.”

  “Do you know someone?”

  “Yes, darling. A man named Zell, a top official in Customs and Immigration.”

  “A Kraut?”

  “Not a ‘Kraut,’ Steven. A German and a fine man. This is not as rare a combination as you seem to think. Andreas Zell spent the war organizing resistance to Hitler. He lost his family, his left hand and his youth, and saved the lives of thousands of Jews in the process. He ended up in Sachsenhausen, might as well have been one of us.”

  “Don’t speak German with him. I won’t understand a word.”

  “It won’t matter, Steven. You won’t be with us.”

  “What?”

  “While I badger Andreas, I want you to check into the Residenz Hotel. We’ll call Mr. Warner from there.”

  “But . . . Germany?”

  “Steven, it’s not even an hour away by air. The more we can tell Warner about Claussen, the better. If you had been with William Fairchild this morning, you’d understand.”

  “Who the fuck’s William Fairchild?”

  “Excuse me, Steven, but we have to hurry. Run down and flag a cab, would you, please? I’ll call Air France.”

  “Make sure it’s an Airbus,” he said on his way out.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sophie swept into the Bonn hotel room just as Steven awoke from his nap. A little rest made a lot of difference in the way he felt.

  She pulled a photograph from her briefcase and tossed it in his direction. “There’s your Hans-Walter Claussen.”

  He sat up and stared at it. “Not a face you’d forget,” he said.

  “No, it isn’t. Here, I’ll trade you.”

  She took the picture and handed him a photocopied document.

  “A real-estate map?” he asked.

  “A plat. Number three, a ninety-acre tract. Claussen bought it when he came back to Germany. It’s in the East, the former German Democratic Republic. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it sure as hell does. How did you get what’s-his-name to give you this stuff?”

  “A professional secret. Look here.” She used her finger to trace the curve of a river running through the top right corner of the plat. “That’s the Augraben.”

  “The what?”

  “The Augraben River, Steven. I know of it because downstream a few kilometers is a famous old estate. Bismarck is rumored to have spent weeks there planning his attack on France.”

  “No shit. Maybe the soil produces belligerent assholes.”

  “It could be the water. Claussen’s land used to be a small state-run farm. No telling what he does there now.”

  “We’re going to find out, aren’t we, Sophie?”

  “Yes, as soon as it’s safe. We’ll have to be quick on the draw to beat the authorities.”

  “We’ll beat them. This is our story.”

  “I like your attitude, Steven. Let me show you exactly where the place is located.”

  Sophie reached into her briefcase again and took out a map of Germany. She unfolded it across the coffee table. Using her pen as a pointer, she tapped Bonn, then moved eastward until she came to Berlin. “If you go due north from here, up past Neubrandenburg, you’ll come to the village of Altenhagen. See it?”

  “Hold on a second. Okay, I see it.”

  She tapped some more, then drew a little star. “The farm is here, in this space between the village and the river. Now excuse me for a moment, darling. I’m going to wash up before we make our call.”

  She left the room. He studied the spot and committed the ugly sounding syllables of the nearby towns to memory.

  It felt good to know where the son of bitch lived.

  ***

  Warner poured himself another cup of black coffee, his fourth that morning, then went back to perusing the endless list of parts taken from Stein’s basement. From time to time, he glanced at the enormous cement-caked stamping press he had ordered brought to his office. It had been excavated from the basement, next to Stein’s body.

  Nearby had lain the only aircraft parts in the entire depot bearing serial numbers. These were the parts the archaeologists had dug up first, the parts he and Simmons had driven over to Boeing. They were in Washington now, with Officer King’s full knowledge, on order of the FBI. The much larger stash of parts – 623 items, to be exact – bore no numbers and had been stored in bins along the walls.

  This was clearly a big-time operation, and the possibility that there might be other storage depots elsewhere in the United States weighed heavily on Warner’s mind.

  He needed to make sense of all this; and do it quickly. He would review the facts from the beginning again. This time he hoped he could draw some conclusions.

  First, not every part in the depot belonged to a Boeing aircraft. In fact, all of the American manufacturers that had built commercial airliners in the last three decades were represented: McDonnell Douglas and its predecessor, Douglas; Lockheed; General Dynamics.

  Since the latter two companies hadn’t built airliners for many years, and since some of the parts belonged to dinosaurs as old as the Boeing 707, this clearly meant that the parts depot had existed for a long time.

  More importantly, it meant that the initial target of the sabotage operation had not been limited to Boeing aircraft but had encompassed the entire long-distance commercial fleet of the United States.

  Second, the unnumbered parts, or at least the 74 that had been tested to date, were defective. The numbered parts, on the other hand, were not defective. In addition, three of the numbered parts bore serial numbers matching those of the defective parts involved in the recent crashes.

  Knowing this much, it was obvious that “good” parts had been removed from the parts stream and replaced by matching “bad” parts from the depot. The stamping press, whose ingenious plates had survived intact, had been used to create perfect counterfeit serial numbers. Since only defective parts destined for Boeing aircraft had been slipped into the parts stream, it seemed clear that the Boeing Company had been singled out as the target of the sabotage.

  Hal Larsen had argued at the meeting in the Oval Office that Iraq might have bought a Soviet sabotage capacity that had existed for years. This, it seemed to Warner, was at least theoretically possible. But if Iraq had acquired such a vast arsenal to avenge its humiliation on the battle field, why would Iraq have limited its operation to just two newer models of Boeing aircraft? Why would it have omitted the Boeing 747, the Lockheed Tri-Star, the MD-11 and the DC-10 – all capable of carrying at least as many passengers as the 757 or 767? And why would Iraq have targeted only a few aircraft if it had the capacity to destroy many more with almost no additional effort?

  The answer, it seemed to Warner, could only be that Iraq was not the perpetrator. This was not an indiscriminate strike at the US; it was a campaign to discredit Boeing.

  Tim Simmons came in and tossed his jacket over the stamping press. “Chief, sorry to disturb you.”

  “You don’t look sorry. Is it Galloway again?”

  “Almost as bad. We can’t get rid of this journalist who claims to be a frie
nd of yours and promises you will want to speak with her once we give you her name. She’s been calling back every ten seconds. It’s beginning to grate on everyone’s nerves. I told her our policy on dealing with the press, but that didn’t stop her. She just keeps calling back and tying up our phone lines. What should I tell her?”