The Diaries - 01

by Chuck Driskell

  “Sure, but tactically they’re not much good,” Jean answered. His aim, as dangerous as it might be, was to put Nicky on a lower footing by being a condescending ass. Doing so wasn’t a stretch for Jean.

  “I had these rounds made special. Hollow points. The gunsmith told me if I was to hit a thin man in the leg or arm, it would take the limb clean off in one shot.”

  Jean decided to throw caution to the wind and further insult Nicky. “You had to be told that by a gunsmith?” he snorted. Marcel turned to Jean, arching an eyebrow.

  Nicky seemed to ignore the disrespect. He twisted the pistol before replacing it in a gray rack, dropping the cartridge on the ledge below. He removed a tightly bundled stack of money, American dollars bound by shrink-wrap, and stepped directly in front of Jean. He was nearly a full foot shorter than the lanky Frenchman. “This is all you care about, isn’t it?”

  “Money?” Jean asked. “It may appear that way, but no. I have other pursuits.”

  “Yeah, right. Whores. Lying. Thieving.”

  “Among other things,” Jean answered, his smile existing only on his mouth.

  “Where’s Hartline?” Nicky said in a forceful voice.

  “Gage Hartline? I honestly don’t know.”

  “Bullshit. You found him and took those valuable books, didn’t you? Probably killed him and now, piece of shit you are, you’re going to deny everything.”

  Jean took a step backward, resting an elbow on a row of the vault’s steel drawers. “I don’t know where Hartline is. The entire polizei in Germany is searching for him. Furthermore, the diaries he has…well, you should know more than I do about those, at least from what I heard went down in Metz.”

  Nicky breathed heavily as he eyed Jean, poking a finger at him. “You found him. Found him and killed him.”

  “Nicky, I did nothing of the—”

  “Shut up, Jean! Just shut up!” Nicky ripped the shrink-wrap open, throwing the money upward so that it showered around them both. “There, take my money too! You fucked me out of killing the American, and took what he owed me, so now just do the same to me you lying prick!”

  Jean frowned, keeping calm and turning to Marcel in confusion. “What is this? Why am I being ambushed over something I have no knowledge of?”

  Marcel stared at the floor.

  Nicky retrieved the pistol again, ramming the clip in, raking the slide. “Over here, Jean. Look at me, not him!”

  Jean could barely breathe. He had known this could possibly be a troublesome meeting since he hadn’t been able to deliver Gage. He hadn’t expected to be killed. But now, deep below the mansion, if Nicky killed him, even the DGSE might never know what happened. If they scrutinized Jean’s actions, they would likely find the relationship with the Glaives and Nicky Arnaud. Jean had always planned to term the association as strategic, but if he were dead, that wouldn’t be possible. The boys from Paris would simply shake their collective heads. The connection to the Glaives would be bad publicity. They would probably bury everything, write Jean Jenois off as a loss, and move on. Even in the cold of the basement, Jean felt a trickle of sweat dangling from his neatly waxed eyebrow. Nicky stepped closer.

  “What do you think, Marcel? If I shoot this crass, pompous Parisienne in the neck, would it take his head off clean?”

  Marcel snorted. “Depends what your definition of clean is. The safe wouldn’t be clean, and I can guess who would be tasked with cleaning it up.”

  Jean’s pulse began to redline. Nicky was serious. He turned his head back to the diminutive mob boss.

  Like a gunfighter, Nicky shifted the pistol to his left hand, then back to his right. “This bitch is heavy. They tell me the kickback is so bad that’s it’s been known to knock the shooter out if he doesn’t have strong arms.”

  Jean blinked rapidly, afraid to talk.

  “Get on your knees,” Nicky commanded as his eyes blackened.

  “Nicky,” Jean protested.

  “Now, you bourgeois-wannabe cocksucker!”

  Marcel stepped to Jean and pressed downward on his shoulders. From behind, Jean heard Marcel whisper for him to, “Just do it.” His tone was odd but reassuring. Jean knelt.

  Nicky instructed him to put his hands on his head and, when Jean complied, Marcel clamped his strong hands over them to hold them in place. Nicky pointed the large pistol at Jean’s forehead. Somewhere in the recesses of Jean’s mind, he found it comical that the hollow-point bullet, if used, could easily kill Marcel as well, even if he wasn’t standing behind him. Hollow-points are highly unpredictable as they travel through flesh and bone, sometimes turning as much as ninety degrees before exiting their target.

  “Last chance, Jean Jenois. Where’s Hartline? Did you kill him?” Nicky’s restrained voice quavered on another explosion.

  “No, Nicky, I didn’t! If you’ll let me up I’ll tell you everything.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying again, motherfucker? That’s all you do for a living!”

  Jean swallowed thickly. “You won’t, but I have information for you that you’re going to find interesting. Very interesting.”

  Nicky cut his eyes to Marcel, who shrugged. ”Why wouldn’t you have told us when you got here?” Nicky growled.

  “It’s hot. I was saving it as leverage.”

  “So why now?”

  “Well, I’d say right now I need some leverage.”

  Nicky licked his lips, his eyes searching Jean’s face. The pistol changed angles slightly. “Let him up.”

  Jean stood and straightened his suit with his long fingers. “It’s about Hartline. I originally told you he was ex-Army and just a civilian contractor.”

  “Yeah?” Nicky asked.

  “Not true, and even I didn’t know it until just today.”

  “So what is he?” Marcel asked, his interest growing.

  “He’s American all right. He’s in the CIA, or at least working for them.”

  “Horseshit,” Nicky said flatly. “This is a bluff to divert the attention from you.”

  “You’ve got sources in Germany. Call any one of them that might be on the Hartline case because of that girl your foolhardy thugs killed. See what they have on his background.” Nicky snapped his finger and pointed upstairs. Marcel hustled through the wine cellar as he pulled his cell phone from his coat pocket. Jean could hear him ascending the knotty-pine stairs, and then he heard the murmur of his voice echoing through the stone basement.

  Nicky made Jean turn and resume his kneeling position, burrowing the barrel of the pistol into the back of his neck. As they waited, the high boss of the Glaives peppered the DGSE agent with insults, ranging from distaste over Jean’s height to his presumably small penis size. Jean listened to each one with narrowed eyes, his psychological education at work in trying to diagnose Nicky Arnaud. Just before Marcel rushed down the stairs, the diagnosis came in:

  Psychopath. Pure and simple.

  “Nicky! He’s not lying. Hartline’s a real shadow, a true spook.” Marcel appeared from the curved hallway, breathing heavily. The dog was with him, appearing happy to be involved.

  Nicky eased the pressure of the gun. “Who told you this?”

  “I checked two of our assets. The one in Bonn and the one in Frankfurt. The polizei and BKA have scaled back their search. The guy was a false front. No one knows anything about him.”

  “So why me?” Nicky asked in a challenging voice, turning his attention back to Jean. “Why would a CIA agent be dicking around with me? Aren’t they concerned with their own national security? What the fuck would they want with me?”

  Jean’s mind danced. He turned his head enough to see him from one eye. “Hartline killed Leon, didn’t he? Was he mixed up in anything, perhaps doing something that could be perceived as a threat to the U.S. or its allies?”

  “Maybe,” Nicky said shrugging. “We do business with all types.” His head shook as he appeared to be considering everyone they worked with. Finally he shook his head. “I don’t
think so.”

  “Just be glad it was him and not you,” Jean answered solemnly.

  “So they’re done? They killed Leon and that’s it?” Nicky asked, sounding dubious.

  “Probably,” Jean answered. “Trust me, if the CIA wanted you dead, you would already be producing maggots.”

  Marcel narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

  “What about the books?” Nicky asked.

  “The diaries? Props, most likely. Just a way to get to Leon through the man who owed him money,” Jean answered coolly. “The CIA is visionary in its inventiveness. Think about it…using a gay book dealer to get to a mobster. Leon would have never expected a threat to develop there.” Jean’s voice trailed off as he shook his head in a mist of reverie over the plot. He risked standing. “Hartline is most assuredly long gone. I’d forget about him and move on.”

  Marcel was frowning, shaking his head, an almost amused look on his face. “Okay, so according to you this guy Hartline is CIA, right?”

  “Yes,” Jean answered cautiously.

  “So if that’s the case, who the hell was the girl that Luc and Bruno killed?”

  Jean forced a regretful look. “Probably some poor bimbo that Hartline used as a pigeon. I saw her picture. Beautiful. An absolute shame. You probably did Hartline a favor by wiping her out.”

  The two mobsters were silent, their minds processing what they had both just learned. Jean tapped out a cigarette, not offering one to either man. “And this is how the CIA operates, gentlemen. Death, to them, is only a means to an end. Their end.” He lit the cigarette, the streams of smoke from his Romanic nose dual wisps of curving ribbon in the still, cold air.

  “What a story,” Marcel said, eyeing Jean. Napoleon trotted into the safe, sitting by Marcel, leaning against his leg.

  Nicky was oblivious to Marcel’s tone. He walked from the safe, standing between the wine racks, rubbing his head. “So this entire deal, the whole production of sucking in Leon and Bruno with valuable books, was all bullshit just so the CIA could eliminate Leon?”

  Jean looked at Marcel. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Jean took the cue. “Yes, Nicky, it’s over.”

  Nicky gathered himself, taking great breaths of the cool cellar air. He looked at Jean through slit eyes. “You still here?”

  “Do you need anything else?” Jean asked.

  Nicky spat at him. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  ***

  Frankfurt, Germany

  It was nearly eleven p.m. when Captain Ellis exited Colonel Barron’s office. Jim Sorgi was waiting on him in the staff room, sipping a cup of scorched coffee in an effort to stay awake. He heard the door down the hall slam shut before Ellis walked in, his face telling nothing.

  “Well?” Sorgi asked, standing with open hands.

  Ellis stared at him for a long moment, finally allowing the hint of a smile. “He gave us the go-ahead and a short rope. A very thin, brittle, ultra-short rope.”

  “What’s that mean? We can investigate?”

  “On a low profile,” Ellis answered, making a lowering gesture with his hands. “That means nothing public.”

  Sorgi was confused. “So what do we do?”

  Ellis walked to the computer and logged on. He opened the U.S. Army’s Personnel and Records access program, pointing to the green-and-black screen as the cursor blinked. “First, we dig into the background of Mister Gage Nils Hartline. No one has been able to figure out who he is, so that’s what we’re tasked with.”

  Sorgi’s face was a mask of incredulity. “The German government can’t figure it out…so how will we?”

  “I have no idea,” Ellis replied with an open face. The computer’s hard-drive whirred as it came up to speed and Ellis sipped his hot coffee. “There’s something amiss, here, obviously. And it’s always been my experience that in situations like this, even with a simple mystery such as missing car keys, the best thing to do is to slow down and move very carefully through the problem.”

  “The problem being a man with no background.”

  “Correct.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Let’s begin with what we do know.” He tapped in several keys, bringing up the alleged military file of Gage Nils Hartline, hovering the mouse over the picture and clicking it. He printed the picture on the color printer out in the hall. “Get a thumbtack and tack that picture on the board over there.”

  Sorgi left for a moment, doing what he was told, posting the headshot of Gage at eye level in the center of the blank corkboard. “Now what?”

  Ellis finished his coffee before he moved his chair to a position ten feet away from the picture, lacing his hands behind his head, leaning back and staring at the photo.

  “What are you doing?”

  Ellis didn’t turn from the image. “Bring a chair next to me.”

  Sorgi complied, sitting to Ellis’s left. “Now what?”

  “Just look at him.”

  With an exasperated breath, Sorgi laced his hands behind his head and mimicked Ellis’s pose. After a few minutes, Ellis whispered, “Where you at, Gage Hartline?”

  Chapter 10

  Friday, November 6 - Böblingen, Germany

  It was frigid in the southwest German town of Böblingen. Having arrived in the late afternoon on Thursday, Gage drove the motorcycle directly into a protected forest and spent the evening huddled on the ground. He wore the polizei leathers and his own clothes, and covered himself with the driest leaves he could find. He might have dozed off once or twice, but he never really enjoyed any meaningful sleep. He had been unable to use a hotel since, typically, they were the first businesses who would receive a man-wanted report—with a picture—from the polizei or the BKA. At sunup, Gage weighted the polizei leathers with stones and threw them into the same pond he had sunk the motorcycle in the night before. Afterward, he stared at the pond, searching for any telltale traces of gasoline or oil. The night before, after finding electrical tape in the small toolbox in the side-bag, he had carefully wrapped the intake as well as the muffler, sealing the holes with rubber gloves from the motorcycle’s first-aid kit. Theoretically, the bike should be watertight for some time. Seeing no evidence of the BMW, Gage began to feel better about his chances of avoiding detection.

  He emerged well after sunup, when most people had started their Fridays, blissfully ignorant of the wanted fugitive walking among them. If someone had seen the stolen BMW when he had driven into Böblingen, it wouldn’t take long for Gage to find out. But as soon as Gage entered the town, wearing the filthy pants and flannel shirt he had stolen the morning before, he correctly diagnosed the population as going about its business as usual. Böblingen is a small city with mostly new buildings. Gage had never before been there and, like many other German cities, it had obviously been wiped out by Allied bombs in World War II. Even the beautiful Evangelist Parish Church, located in the town center, had a new feel, and Gage guessed that it—like many historical sites—had been rebuilt after being leveled.

  As Gage passed through the town, he allowed himself time to stop for a quick bite at an imbiss, afterward going by memory to Offenburger Strasse. The street was in a residential area with middle-class homes and apartment buildings. Gage located the address he had long since memorized. Upon seeing it, he made a quick revolution, scanning the area for a proper reconnaissance location, finally exiting the street the way he had come. At the mouth of the Strasse, he made a right, walked a block followed by another right. After half a kilometer down the adjacent street, Gage crossed a wooded lot and then made his way under an enormous section of power lines. He positioned himself in a stand of trees, on a small hill, just above the modern-looking apartment building. Without ever moving a muscle, he sat, hidden by the trees and branches he had gathered, watching residents come and go. The fall day turned from cold to cool; Gage remained still. Using a technique he had learned years before, he created a vacuum in his mind, allowing it to focus only on the task at hand.
Not the cold, sadness for Monika, Crete, or the need to urinate could shatter Gage’s reverie.

  It wasn’t until after lunchtime that he finally saw a blue Explorer bump into the parking lot. The door opened and Kenny Mars stepped out, his stride as confident and obvious as it had been so many years earlier. He was wearing his standard Army ACUs. On his head, cocked sideways in an almost arrogant style, was his green beret.

  Satisfied that he was all alone and without a tail, Gage made his way into the breezeway, carefully taking the stairs before knocking lightly on the door at the top landing.

  “Yeah?” came the voice from inside.

  “Can we talk?” Gage asked, stepping back so Kenny could see him. There was a pause as Gage saw the security peephole darken.

  “I don’t know you,” was the delayed reply.

  “Actually, you do, Kenny. Please open the door.” Gage put his hands up to show he meant no harm. A chain could be heard sliding off the door, and then it opened.

  “Who are you?” the man asked with narrowed eyes. He was Gage’s age, if not a year or two older. Kenny Mars was African-American, with short hair marked by a single gray streak above his left temple. Though he was still handsome, his eyes, like Gage’s, were now marked by early crow’s feet. His face and forehead showed a few more lines of stress, but overall, he’d aged well.

  “You might remember me as Schoenfeld,” Gage said flatly.

  Kenny stared blankly before his eyes went wide. He opened the door fully. “Holy shit.”

  “Mind if I come in?” Gage rubbed his hands together as he stepped into the warmth, finally allowing himself to acknowledge the cold that had penetrated deep in his bones for many hours.

  An hour later, Gage placed the empty bottle of water on the coffee table and leaned back, his skin still tingling from the rapid warm-up. “And that’s all I can tell you. There were some gaps, obviously, for reasons I’m sure you understand. But everything I just told you was truth and, as you know, until I can prove my innocence, helping me could get you in a world of hurt.”

  Kenny rubbed his face with his hands, seemingly overwhelmed by the incredible story he had just heard. He was an 18-Echo, a special operations communications specialist on an Alpha-team based at Panzer Kaserne. The last time he had seen Gage, then Matthew Schoenfeld, he had been at language school during their Special Forces training. Schoenfeld had been rumored dead the very next year, killed in Bosnia. Kenny had not thought of him very often since then, glancing around after a moment as if coming out of a trance and realizing that a filthy man was sitting on his sofa.