Hunter's Rain

by Julian Jay Savarin

  “You’re doing very well. Go on.”

  “You took Greville to the Eifel, suckering the hitman to follow. You ended up following him. In unfamiliar territory, he blundered onto the Nürburgring race track, which is where he ended up being splashed by his own controllers. They tried again, failed again. The two they sent this time, were part of the group who were eavesdropping on this place. One dead, one captured. Your nemesis group bring down the police chopper that was taking the live one back to Berlin. All dead, including the police crew and escort.”

  She paused once more.

  “You discover that your father left some highly sensitive material for you. Pappi didn’t say what; but the way he said what he did tell me, was enough to make me understand that your father was a very brave man. He worked undercover, out there in the east. He really was a spy, and you never suspected. It’s also looking more and more that Rachko told you the truth last winter, on Rügen; and that your digging is bringing a lot of nasty things into the daylight. I include people in that. The Grenoble mystery about the crash site that the Goth just found, all adds to it. They tried to kill Pappi, and today they sent one of their bastards to try and take me out. That’s what I know.”

  “Which is fairly comprehensive,” Müller said. “I’ll give you the rest, then we’ll continue the hunt.”

  “Grenoble?”

  “Kreuzberg, then Baden-Württemberg, then Grenoble.”

  “I always like to travel.”

  “Perhaps you should reconsider. Being around me - as you have yourself seen to day - is becoming very dangerous.”

  “Are you kidding? These toads came at me today. It’s personal now. I’m mad, and I’m going to get even.”

  Müller went to the cabinet which held the sensitive information, and paused. “Pappi and I wondered how come they knew so quickly, that you were here.”

  “It didn’t come from my side of the ocean,” Carey Bloomfield said. “I’ve told no one I was coming to Europe.”

  “No one back at the Pentagon, or wherever it is you’ve got your office?”

  “No one,” she repeated. “And don’t look at me like that, Müller.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you don’t believe me.”

  Müller worked his way around the comment. “Even if you’ve told no one…someone knows.”

  “Well, I’ve no idea how that person found out. I’ve got my phone. But no one’s been in touch.”

  “Not even personal friends?”

  “Not even.”

  “The kind of people we’re dealing with would have access to passenger lists…”

  “They’d still first have to know I’d be coming over…”

  “Not if they were doing a trawl, just in case.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “No.”

  “So what have we got?” she asked.

  “Betrayal…somewhere.”

  “Great. So now my own people are suspect?”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “No. I am. Damn it. Who would do this?”

  “Perhaps,” Müller began, tapping in the code on the drawer keypad, “you should see the rest. Make the picture a little clearer. Perhaps.” He paused again. “I may be quite mad showing this to you.”

  “You still don’t trust me?”

  “It isn’t a question of trust anymore. It a question of survival. Mine…and now yours. Their attempt to kill you, was to get at me. And even though they have no real idea of the explosive potential of the information we now have in this cabinet, they are certainly beginning to suspect that I know rather too much for their own safety. They are now seeing that I am meddling in areas where only specific knowledge would take me. However, if they really did know how far I’ve got… ” Müller let his words fade and gave the cabinet a brief pat. “Only Pappi, Greville, and I know the full, detonating force of what is in there. Kaltendorf has no inkling. Now that you are here, they will assume that I may have passed some knowledge to you…”

  “Hung for a sheep, as well as a lamb.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Hey, I’m up to my neck. How much higher can the water go?”

  Müller pulled open the deep drawer and took out a brown briefcase, well-used, but in virtually pristine condition. It looked like a version of a doctor’s bag.

  “You judge,” he said, as Carey Bloomfield stared at it. “My father left this for me with Aunt Isolde, when I was still a boy. The first time I knew of it, was last May. Something Greville said made me ask Aunt Isolde. She had been instructed to give it to me only if I asked.”

  “Meaning you be already looking.”

  Müller nodded as he took the briefcase to the table. “He gave it to her before he and my mother took that flight they were never to finish. They each wrote a letter to me. Both letters, in their own way, were goodbye notes. But my father’s also carried some terrible information about what the people we are up against, are planning. The individuals involved cover a wide spectrum and in a few cases, different nationalities.” The corners of his mouth turned down briefly. “You remember Neubauer.”

  She nodded. “That police director who was supposedly a pal of Kaltendorf’s. He saw your parents the day before their last flight. The one that was shot by his own driver.”

  Müller nodded. “He was just one of the unexpected. Another person who regularly came to our house when I was a boy, was a bishop…”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “If you’re planning something like this, you need to contaminate what passes for the establishment. Think of the walks of life that make up the establishment of any nation, and you’ll have an idea. They call themselves The Bretheren – spelt exactly as it sounds – but they know themselves more colloquially as The Semper…”

  “‘Always’,” Carey Bloomfield remarked softly.

  “They’re saying they’ll always be around.”

  “An infection that won’t go away.”

  Müller snapped the catches on the briefcase, and prised it open as if working at the jaws of an animal.

  “All in there,” he said to her. “Help yourself.”

  “Don’t you have personal things among…”

  “I’ve had time to adjust to it. Look at whatever you want.”

  She gave him an uncertain look, then reached into the case with a hesitant hand. She took out some envelopes, clearly holding photographs. Then some files, and unbound documents.

  She picked up a letter. “No,” she remarked softly. “That’s to you.” She put it down, and picked up another. “That’s to you too.” Again, she put it down without reading it.

  She picked up one of the envelopes, and gently shook the photographs out onto the table. She gasped when she saw the first. It was a photograph that had shocked Müller when he had first seen it in May.

  “Your father!” she exclaimed in a voice barely above a whisper. “You look like him.” She stared at the man in the uniform of a colonel of police in the DDR. “What a handsome man. Even though I’ve seen the one in your apartment, this gives him an extra…”

  “It’s the uniform. Aren’t all women supposed to like a man in uniform?”

  “Speaking as someone who wears a uniform, and who has a father who wore one…it’s more like what takes your fancy. I can show you two men in the same uniform, and one will look like a toad.” She studied the photograph closely. “But not this one.”

  “Romeo Six,” Müller said.

  He had spoken so casually, she almost missed it.

  “I know,” she said. “It shook me when Pappi told me.”

  “For me, it was an earthquake.”

  “I can imagine. He put himself deep into danger.”

  “For what he believed in.”

  She nodded, and put the photograph down with something close to reverence. She continued to look at it, seeing much of Müller there.

  Then with seeming reluctance, she selected another. This time, it was a
group photograph. She studied each face, then gave a sharp intake of breath.

  “That’s impossible!” she cried in a shocked whisper.

  Müller came closer to peer down. “What’s impossible? Have you recognized a face?”

  Instead of replying, she asked, “Do you have a loupe?”

  “We have many.”

  Still staring at the photograph, she held out a hand.

  Müller pulled out one of the drawers in the table, and took out a loupe. He shut the drawer as he handed the viewing instrument to her.

  She grabbed it without a word, and placed it on a section of the photograph. She then leaned down to put an eye against it.

  She remained like that for some time, as if trying to prove beyond doubt that she had not been mistaken.

  Abruptly, she straightened. Müller watched her curiously.

  She placed the backs of her hands against each hip, and swung from side to side in a slow, yet clearly agitated motion. It was disturbing to watch.

  “Carey?” Müller began. “Are you alright?”

  “Wow,” she said. “You’ve actually said my name.” It was not bitterly spoken, but there was a sharp dryness to it.

  Müller looked uncertain. “Are you going to tell me what you have seen there?”

  Carey Bloomfield tightened her lips, and wiped at her right eye.

  “You’re crying?”

  “Of course I’m not crying, damn it!” She did not turn to look at him. “Would you cry if you discovered that the man with whom you’ve been trusting your life for years, was dirty?”

  “What?”

  She jabbed a finger at the photograph. “Toby Adams. Younger. But it’s him.”

  Müller looked at her steadily. “Who is Toby Adams?”

  “Long story Müller.” She gave a short, bitter laugh, and still did not look at him. “Short story…call him my controller. The man who’s supposed to be my home plate backup. Toby Adams is my field controller. When I’m out there, he’s the man with the cavalry if I get exposed. Toby Adams was there when I went – against orders – to rescue my brother, who was being peeled alive by that bastard cousin of yours, somewhere in the Mideast.”

  “We killed the bastard cousin.”

  “I know we killed him. I was there. Toby Adams was the controller when I first came here…”

  “Posing as a journalist.”

  “Posing as a journalist,” she admitted flatly. “He was locked into the mission…”

  Müller made a face. “’The mission’. I was the mission?”

  “Not you per se…”

  “Fine distinction.”

  “Don’t roll the tape back, Müller. We’re past that. We have something much more dangerous to deal with. If Toby Adams really is part of the Semper…this is major shit.”

  “Perhaps like my father, he has infiltrated. My father was Romeo Six…”

  “Maybe. Maybe Toby has infiltrated them. Then again, as you would say…”

  “What if he’s the real thing?”

  At last, she turned to face him as she nodded. The was a suspicion of moisture about her eyes.

  “That bad, is it?” he asked.

  “Not what you think. We weren’t an item. He is…was like a father to me. I trusted him with my life…so many times. Yet at any time, if it suited him, he could have betrayed me. Maybe he sent that fake cop today. In the beginning, he may not have known I was here. But he knows the right people, and has all the connections. Toby’s grade is equivalent to general rank. All he’d need is to do some checking…”

  “Stop,” Müller said. “You’re running far ahead. You’ve seen a picture where you least expected to. That’s it. All it means with any certainty, is that he is in the photograph…assuming it has not itself been faked. Everything else is conjecture at this stage.”

  “I trusted him, goddammit!”

  “Perhaps you may be able to trust him again.”

  “And if not?”

  “You are forewarned. He would never expect that and certainly, not from this source. You have an edge. A very big one.”

  “I thought that fake cop had made me mad; but this…this really does.”

  “Then if you later find you have reason to be…use the anger profitably, and get good and even…” Müller gave a tiny smile. “…as you would say.”

  “Throwing my words back at me, Müller?”

  “No.”

  Her smile was suddenly tired, and rueful. “I think I’m beginning to understand, just slightly, how you feel. No one’s killed my parents; but the sense of betrayal…”

  “Wait, and see. How much have you told him since the time you and I first met?”

  “Looking back…too damned much.”

  “I see.”

  “He was my main contact in the field, Müller: my source, my base, my rescue unit, my communications...” Carey Bloomfield paused. “Get the picture?”

  “Too clearly.”

  “I got those oak leaves mainly because of what I was able to pass on since you and I met.”

  “I see,” Müller repeated.

  “It was a mission, Müller. It still is, I suppose…”

  “Even now?”

  “No! Not now. I came privately.”

  “Have you told him about our mysterious, apparent Russian-American, or American-Russian – or possibly neither – contact who calls himself Grogan, and Vladimir, when it suits him?”

  “No.”

  “That’s something, at least.”

  “He does not know about this place, either.”

  “That’s a relief. Anything else I should know?”

  She gave him a searching look. “What’s this, Müller? Third degree?”

  “I am a policeman.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  A silence descended between them.

  “Look,” Müller said at last, “let’s not stand here facing each other like antagonists. We have an unexpected development. Let us attend to it calmly. We cannot change the circumstances under which we first met. Neither can we change what we are. You, Intelligence officer…me, policeman. Right now, our interests converge: survival…”

  “Truce?”

  “As far as I am concerned,” Müller said, “we were never at war.”

  “Watchful wariness, then.”

  “Quite possibly. And now,” Müller went on, “where do you go from here?”

  “To Toby Adams.”

  “So he is in Berlin. Is that wise?”

  “He’d expect me to,” Carey Bloomsfield replied. “As this is a private visit, I did not plan to see him. But that photo changes everything…”

  “Will you be able to face him without giving an indication…”

  “Oh I can do that. Believe you me.”

  “Yes. I know you can.”

  She shot him a look that carried more than a trace of guilt. “I could see that arrow.”

  “But you have also been very helpful to me,” Muller added, soothing the barb.

  “That was diplomatic.”

  “The truth.”

  She nodded to herself, and began to replace the photographs. “I don’t need to see more, for now.” She began to put everything back into the briefcase, taking her time about it while she thought out her strategy. Then she paused. “Do you remember seeing any document with his name on it?”

  “I did wonder when you would ask,” he said, “as soon as I heard you say the name. There is just the one mention. As I had nothing else to go on, I simply ringed it. Here. Let me…” Müller searched through the documents, then pulled out a single sheet. “Here it is.” He passed it to her. “Your German is excellent, so you don’t need me to translate.”

  She took the typed sheet, and began to read the paragraph bearing the name ringed by a yellow marker pen.

  “’The American,” she read, translating as she went, “’was introduced as Toby Adams. It may well not be his real name, as would be expected in these circumstances. He was loo
ked upon as an important member…’”

  She stopped, and returned the paper. “I don’t need to see more.”

  Müller put it away, and shut the case.

  “Do we have time for me to pay Toby a visit before we go off to Kreuzberg?” Carey Bloomfield asked, expression neutral.