With the last of the rush hour traffic it was after six by the time Speyer, Gloria, Baumann, and Lane crossed the Key Bridge into Georgetown, and another fifteen minutes before they pulled into the circular driveway of a lovely old three-story Georgian mansion just off R Street across from Montrose Park. The house was owned by Thomas Mann, a distant cousin of the famous writer.
It felt odd to Lane to be back like this, because he and Frannie maintained a house a half-dozen blocks away in a back alley called Rock Court. But he didn’t think there was much risk of being recognized here, not unless they went out to dinner someplace public tonight.
A slight man with thinning white hair, who walked with a stoop and was impeccably dressed in a three-piece London-tailored suit, waited for them in the flower-filled conservatory at the back. When the doorman left, the man gave Gloria a warm hug, and then shook hands with Speyer.
“It’s good to be back in Washington, Herr General,” Speyer said.
I’m glad that you’re here, and of course you can count on me to help,” Mann said in a comradely tone.
“You remember Sergeant Baumann,” Speyer said.
“Of course. You’re looking fit, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And this is a new associate of ours, John Browne, until lately with South African Intelligence. I’ve hired him because of his … unique talents.”
Mann sized him up coolly, and then shook hands. “How is it that you met Helmut?”
“Let’s just say that I was in the right place at the right time,” Lane replied.
“He saved my life,” Speyer explained.
Mann smiled thinly. “A valuable talent to have around.”
“Not only that, but he’s a diver. South African UDT. Two hundred meters.”
“So you’re going after it finally,” Mann said with some interest. “You must have found the key.”
“Only the means to the key,” Speyer said. “Which is why I’m here in Washington, and which is why I’m going to need your help, Herr General. But with your connections in Washington I don’t think it should present a problem.”
Mann poured them each a glass of sherry. “All right, what can I do for you?”
“I need to know the chief of Russian intelligence here in Washington, and I need to know how closely he’s being watched by the FBI.”
“Ivan Lukashin. Has a nice house over in Arlington. Three car garage, pool. A couple of golf and tennis memberships. He’s better connected here in Washington than your congressmen from Montana. The FBI was watching him because there was a rumor that he was somehow involved with a drug smuggling ring. Russian mafia. But they couldn’t come up with any hard evidence, so they backed off a couple of months ago.”
“Is he connected?”
“If you mean in the Mafia, I frankly don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He can’t afford that lifestyle on his rezident’s pay, so he’s getting help from somewhere.”
“How about in the Kremlin?”
“His father was a missile service general, and his wife’s father was just appointed to Putin’s special advisory staff,” Mann told him. “What are you getting at?”
“I need his help, and I’m looking for a weakness that I can exploit,” Speyer replied easily. He’d seemed tense before, but now he seemed relaxed.
“Obviously it will be money. I can set up a meeting and secure the introductions. But what do you need him for?”
Speyer took a leather-clad notebook and Mont Blanc pen from his vest pocket, jotted down the names of four men, tore out the paper and passed it to Mann. “I need to hire these four men, and I must be assured of their loyalty to me, and their complete discretion.”
Mann read the names and looked up. “Russians still in Germany?”
Speyer nodded. “They are deep cover, and so far as I know they want to keep it that way. But they have some information and the connections with German Television One that I need.”
“The fewer the people involved, the better off you’ll be,” Mann warned.
“I know. But if the information I have is accurate, and if it fits with what these four can tell me and do for me—providing they’ll cooperate—then we’ll be home free.”
Mann sat back, sipped his sherry, and gave Speyer a long, appraising look. “You have been after this holy grail—whatever it really is—for a long time, Helmut. I’ll help even though I don’t know what it is. I owe at least that much to you.”
“Thank you, Herr General,” Speyer said. “And believe me that you don’t want to know the details. How soon can you arrange the meeting?”
“Later tonight, I should think. If that’s not too soon for you.”
“Just perfect,” Speyer said.
“You must understand that you are playing at a dangerous game. The Russians no longer want to be connected with us; they have their own problems. The old ideologies are gone. It’s purely a matter of money now, and personal gain. Lukashin is a master at it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, my old friend,” Speyer said. “Thank you.”
Sitting alone in his second floor study, Thomas Mann had another thought. The arrangements for the meeting tonight were set, but something didn’t seem right with the new man. He phoned an associate in Helena, Montana. “I have a mutual friend with me here in Washington,” he said.
“I shouldn’t be surprised, with the trouble in Kalispell,” said Konrad Aden. Like Mann, he was a prominent attorney and businessman, but he was also the western chief of staff for the Friends, a loose worldwide organization of former Stasi officers in hiding around the world. He dealt with only the most prominent of men in the U.S. west of the Mississippi.
“Is he in any immediate trouble?”
“No, nothing like that. He has friends out here. But he was seen coming out of the Grand Hotel after the shooting. I have some reliable people on their way down to cover his tracks. He may have missed something.”
“I’ve heard nothing about a shooting.”
“It won’t hit the national news,” Aden said. He told Mann everything that had happened, including the current lack of progress in the police investigation.
“It sounds like a set-up to me. I suspect he’s actually brought the shooter here with him. Tall, well dressed, says he’s John Browne, former South African Intelligence.”
“He could be the same man,” Aden said. “What are they up to?”
“I don’t know yet. But clean up the mess out there, and if you find out anything new let me know.”
“Is Browne legitimate?”
“Helmut seems to think he is, but I’ll do my own checking. The problem is one of coincidence, I should think.”
“I agree.” Aden chuckled. “Helmut was always the brash one. Our risk taker.”
“Age has not changed him,” Mann said, and he rang off.
They had their own beautifully appointed, spacious rooms, each with a bathroom. Speyer came down to Lane’s sitting room, and tossed him the Beretta. “You might have use for this.”
“Thanks. I was wondering when I’d get it back.” Lane said. He checked the action and then the load, before stuffing it in his belt at the small of his back.
“Have you ever heard of this Russian?” Speyer asked. “Lukashin?”
“It’s a new name to me.”
“He’s supposed to be one tough son of a bitch, and he’ll almost certainly not come to the meeting alone.”
“Is that where I come in?” Lane asked.
Speyer nodded. “Just keep in the background, and keep your mouth shut. But if the need should arise, kill him.”
“I had a silencer in my luggage.”
Speyer took it out of his pocket and handed it to him. “We’re meeting with them at the Lincoln Memorial at ten o’clock, and it could go either way.”
“I’ll be ready,” Lane said. “But it would be helpful if I knew what the hell I’m putting my life on the line for.”
“Money,” Speyer repl
ied coolly.
“There’s money, and then there’s money, if you catch my meaning.”
“You’re right,” Speyer said after a slight hesitation. “You’re either going to walk away from this operation a rich man, or you’re going to end up dead. So you might as well know what you’re in for.”
“That’s fair enough,” Lane said. “What’s at the bottom of a flooded Nazi bunker that has you interested enough to hire me and to talk to the Russians? Gold?”
“The bunker was one of Hitler’s research centers for Wunder-waffen.”
“Rockets?”
“Something better than that.”
“Nukes?”
Speyer shook his head. “That part’s not important. They were using a special catalyst for their experiments, and they drained nearly all the Third Reich’s entire supply—most of which came from Jews gassed in the concentration camps.”
“If it’s not gold, what then? What’s worth all this effort? Platinum? But that would be too heavy.”
“Diamonds,” Speyer said. “From engagement rings, heirloom jewelry, that sort of thing. A lot of those Jews were rich. There’s maybe three hundred million dollars’ worth down there stored in a safe in the main research laboratory.”
“Why hasn’t anyone gone after them before now?”
“In the first place, those records came into our hands in East Germany, and were buried until I came across them. And secondly, it would be impossible to get down there unless you had the engineering diagrams of the bunker system. There was an explosion right after the war, probably a booby trap, and the entire place is filled with water, and no way to drain it or pump it out. The Russians capped the entrances with a few hundred tons of concrete and marked it as a mass grave.”
“But they really didn’t cap it.”
“Not that one, nor did they completely seal a dozen others. It’s those records I want, and I know the four men who have access to them. Lukashin’s the key.”
“What’s the connection to German television all about?”
“We’re going to do a documentary. That’s how we’re going to get inside without attracting any government attention.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far. But what about the Russians, do they know what’s there?”
“I destroyed that part of the record.”
Something wasn’t adding up for Lane. The German Federal Police were interested in what Speyer was going after, and the Russians knew the layout of the bunker and how to get into it. Why hadn’t something been done by now? “What do the Russians think is there?”
“A bunch of dead Jews.”
“Besides that,” Lane insisted. “They’ll want to know why you want to get down there. What are you going to tell them?”
Speyer gave him a calculating look. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“Diving into a flooded bunker to retrieve something is only part of it. I want to know who’ll be coming after me when it’s over, and why. It has to be more than diamonds.”
Speyer was silent for a long time. But then he nodded. “The Nazis were doing human research, genetics. They supposedly created some monsters.”
Lane gave him a skeptical look.
“I don’t mean bogey men. I mean monstrosities. And the present German government, as well as everyone else who knows anything about the program, called Reichsamt Seventeen, doesn’t want to dredge it up again. The program was ten times worse than the gas chambers, and a thousand times worse than even Josef Mengele. Inhuman beyond belief.”
Even for you, Lane wanted to say. “And they used diamonds as a catalyst.”
“A lot of diamonds.”
“What happens afterwards?”
“To you?” Speyer asked.
“That’s a start.”
“You’ll get paid off, and then you’ll have to make a decision. Either go off on your own or come with us.”
“Where might that be?”
“Eden,” Speyer said.
Lane laughed. “Okay, assuming I buy into your Eden, wherever it might be, what about the Russians? Once they figure out what we’ve brought up they’ll want a share.”
“We’re going to kill them.”
“They still have a long reach.”
“It won’t matter. We’ll be beyond it,” Speyer said with supreme confidence.
“Why not kill me, too?”
Again Speyer hesitated for a long time. “Because Eden won’t be the end of it. There’ll be other projects. If you prove out on this one, I’ll have further use for you. As you so astutely pointed out at the ranch, I’m not a man who throws away valuable assets.”
“No, I don’t expect you are. But I think your friend General Mann is right. You are playing a dangerous game. The Russians are not nice people, and they have very long memories.”
Speyer threw back his head and laughed. “That’s rich,” he said. “That’s very rich.”
The evening was lovely. Lights from the Lincoln Memorial sparkled in the reflecting pool. Straight up the Mall the Washington Monument rose into the night sky, and beyond it the mass of the U.S. Capitol building was like something out of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There was still plenty of traffic on Constitution Avenue and Alternate 50. Some pleasure boats were on the river. Lane drove a Lincoln Town Car, Baumann and Speyer in the backseat. He came down Bacon Drive as far as traffic was permitted, and parked.
There were a few other cars parked here and there, and a Capital City Tours bus had pulled up to the west of the entry. The passengers were getting off while the driver walked away and lit a cigarette. The imposing statue of Lincoln sat serenely behind the thirty-six columns.
“Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut,” Speyer said.
“They’d be fools to start anything here,” Lane replied. “Too public.”
“Don’t count on it. They have diplomatic immunity, a privilege we do not enjoy.”
Lane opened the car door for them. Speyer got out and Baumann slid across right behind him.
“Watch your sight lines,” Baumann warned.
They started up the stairs, Speyer in the lead, when three men came from inside. They wore suits and ties, but the one in the center was much better dressed. He obviously had a sense of fashion unusual for a Russian. The other two looked like typical Russian muscle.
Speyer picked up on it immediately. “Mr. Lukashin,” he said.
“Yes, and you’re Helmut Speyer,” the Russian said, his English barely accented. They shook hands.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet on such a short notice—”
“Let’s take a walk,” Lukashin said. “This way, if you don’t mind.”
They went across the circular drive and took the stairs down to the reflecting pool where there were only a handful of people out and about, most of them heading to the Vietnam War Memorial. Lukashin’s two bodyguards kept close to their boss, and Lane and Baumann flanked them.
The Russian Washington rezident had come to his post in the past six months, and Lane had the troubling thought seeing him now in person that he’d met the man somewhere. He was tall, but slender like a soccer player, and his eyes were blue, his hair blond. Very unusual for a Russian man. Lane tried to think where he might have met him. It was worrisome because he thought he’d seen the spark of recognition in Lukashin’s eyes.
“Thomas was somewhat mysterious,” Lukashin said. “But we’ve always had good dealings in the past. And you come highly recommended by him.”
“This isn’t a social call,” Speyer said unnecessarily.
“No, I didn’t expect it was.” Lukashin glanced at Lane and Baumann, but didn’t bother asking for introductions.
“I need some help from you, and I’m willing to pay handsomely, but only on one condition,” Speyer said.
“I’m listening.”
“Once we conclude our business you will make no attempt to find my whereabouts, or in any way contact me, or even mention my name to an
yone. When this operation has been completed I’ll need to make myself very scarce. Perhaps for a very long time.”
“I can live with that. What do you want from me?”
Speyer took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Lukashin. “These are the names and brief dossiers of four former KGB officers who worked with Stasi in East Germany. They’re still there, under deep cover working for the SVR. I want to hire them, but they will have to be discreet, and they’ll have to understand that once this project has been completed, their covers will be blown and they will have to leave Germany forever. Where they go after that makes no difference to me.”
Lukashin held the pages up to the light from a lamppost and briefly glanced at the information. “You want these men because of certain knowledge they have?”
“That, and their contacts in Germany.”
Lukashin thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think that they would be welcome at home afterward,” he said. “In any case the cost of their repatriation would be very steep. I’ll leave that part of the deal to your discretion. What will you have them do?”
“We’re going to film a documentary.”
Lukashin glanced at the four brief dossiers again. “Under the noses of the BKA, without anyone being the wiser.” The BKA was the German Federal Police Bureau.
“That’s exactly it.”
“Afterwards everyone disappears, and in time even the documentary will be forgotten. I, on the other hand, have a very good memory.”
Speyer handed him another envelope. “You might find this interesting.”
Lukashin opened it and examined the documents that Mann had supplied Speyer. When he was finished reading he looked up, a very interested expression on his face now. “Very generous,” he said.
“I take care of my friends.”
“What if I were to hand these back to you and demand ten percent of whatever it is you hope to recover?”
“It’s a risk that you could take, I suppose,” Speyer said. He held out his hand for the envelopes.
After a moment, however, the Russian put them in his breast pocket. “What if I don’t go through with my part of the bargain?”
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