The Target

by Saul Herzog

  He walked once around the church, mingling among the passersby and rubberneckers who’d gathered outside the police tape.

  He counted six CCTV cameras pointed at the church from different angles and was able to get close enough to five of them to read the serial numbers printed on embossed labels on their protective housing.

  Then he crossed the street and entered a bustling café that overlooked the church. It was a traditional place with ornate cast iron tables and waitresses in black dresses and white aprons.

  “Coffee, please,” he said to his waitress, “and a glass of water.”

  Then he pulled out his phone and called Roth.

  “What’s going on?” Roth said. “What did you find?”

  “Your Clockmaker’s dead,” Lance said.

  “How?”

  “It’s going to be all over the news here. Executed at point-blank range,” Lance said.

  “Executed?”

  “Inside the Kaiser Wilhelm church, two minutes from his shop.”

  “That means…”.

  “It means whoever did it has Laurel. I’m surprised your team didn’t already tell you all this.”

  “I don’t have a team on this, Lance. I’m afraid to extend the loop.”

  “Well, I think we’re going to have to. I took down the serial numbers of some police CCTV cameras around the church.”

  “German police cooperation will take time.”

  “How much time?”

  “You know how they are with civil liberties. They have the strictest privacy laws in the world. Everything requires judicial review. Civil oversight. It’s a nightmare.”

  “So we’re looking at?”

  “Twelve hours at least.”

  “I can’t wait twelve hours.”

  “I know that, Lance.”

  “Can’t we hack in? Take what we need?”

  “They’re an ally.”

  “Laurel and Tatyana are out there, Roth. Grow a pair.”

  “If we want to follow the killer,” Roth said, “I think the fastest way will be to use Keyhole satellite surveillance.”

  “Just get me a location,” Lance said. “I don’t care how you do it.”

  “I’ll stand up a team,” Roth said. “You might as well give me those serial numbers too.”

  Lance read out the numbers, and Roth wrote them down.

  “One more thing,” Lance said before letting him go. “It looks like someone took this execution personally.”

  “The Russians take everything personally.”

  “Well, this time, their man pissed on the Clockmaker’s body after he’d killed him.”

  “Pissed on him?”

  “Yes,” Lance said.

  “In a church?”

  “That’s right,” Lance said.

  He hung up and raised his hand for the waitress’s attention. He didn’t think it would take long for Roth to get back with more information.

  “I’ll have another coffee,” he said to her. “Vienna style,” he added as she hurried off.

  She was back a moment later with a coffee topped with whipped cream, served in a glass.

  Lance leaned back on the chair and watched the police across the street. He looked at the church, its stunted steeple, its caved-in roof.

  One thing was certain.

  Tatyana and Laurel were in trouble.

  He lit a cigarette and sipped his coffee. An hour later, Roth was calling back.

  55

  Roth was talking as soon as Lance picked up the phone.

  “The CCTV’s been tampered with.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The cameras you gave me. The NSA was able to tap into their feeds, but they’ve already been deleted by an XML script.”

  “The system wasn’t secured?”

  “It has the usual protocols, but it looks like these files were deleted from the inside.”

  “From inside Berlin police?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s just what we need.”

  “There was a partial recovery of the feed from the sixth camera, but it’s been severely degraded.”

  “Maybe your guys can clean it up.”

  “I don’t want to get your hopes up on a facial match. But what we might be able to get is the exact time the assassin left the church.”

  “Get the satellite guys working on it. If they can get a visual on the assassin, they might be able to track him all the way to his location.”

  “We’ll see,” Roth said. “The Russians have been interfering with our European Keyhole feed. It’s beginning to become an issue.”

  “They need to figure it out,” Lance said. “If we can’t track this guy from the church, the trail goes cold.”

  Lance hung up. He knew he was being impatient. There were a lot of ways they could investigate the Clockmaker’s murder. The problem was, all of them took time.

  Time that he didn’t have.

  Laurel and Tatyana’s lives were in the balance.

  He finished his coffee and ordered more, chain-smoked cigarettes. It was another hour before Roth called again.

  “Lance, the Keyhole guys found something. I’m patching the analyst in now.”

  A voice came on the line. “This is Lieutenant Harper of the Tenth Space Warning Squadron at Cavalier Air Force Station.”

  “What have you got for me, Harper?”

  “The man leaving the church, we weren’t able to get a facial.”

  “What were you able to get?”

  “We were able to tag him. That allows the algorithm to trace his movements for as long as he remains on the surface.”

  “And how far were you able to track him?”

  “He went from the church to the Detlev Rohwedder Building.”

  “What the hell is the Detlev Rohwedder Building?” Lance said.

  “It’s an old wing of the Air Ministry Building,” Roth said. “Are you familiar with it?”

  “I know it,” Lance said.

  When it was constructed by the Nazis, it was the largest office building in all of Europe. It was the archetype of what later became known as intimidation architecture. It was a seven-story, stone and concrete monstrosity that occupied all of the space between Wilhelmstraße, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, and Leipziger Straße, as well as the site formerly occupied by the Prussian War Ministry. It was so large that even today, staff needed bicycles to get around its more than four miles of corridors.

  It was the type of bureaucratic nightmare written about by Franz Kafka, a world unto itself that dehumanized the individual before the immense power of the nation-state, making them feel almost like insects.

  Given how many acres of space it occupied, it was something of a miracle that it suffered no significant damage during the War, and as soon as the Soviets took control, Stalin had it transformed from a symbol of totalitarian Fascism to a virtually identical symbol of totalitarian Communism.

  There were many rumors about the building, including that it still maintained its original tunnel connections to the underground network of bunkers built by the Nazis.

  “The CIA has intel that both Stasi and KGB agents made use of the tunnel network during the Soviet era,” Roth said.

  “If the Russians were going to hide Laurel and Tatyana,” Lance said, “an underground tunnel network would be the place.”

  “I’ll see what I can get in terms of diagrams and maps,” Roth said, “but anything I find will be very limited. Those tunnels were kept under tight wraps by everyone who ever had access to them.”

  The analyst spoke up again. “From what we can tell, it looks like the target entered the Detlev Rohwedder Building off Leipziger Straße.”

  “All right.”

  “There are no doors or windows facing Leipziger,” the analyst said.

  “Which suggests some kind of secret entrance.”

  “Correct,” the analyst said.

  “All right, good work, Harper,” Roth said. “Lance, get
to Leipziger Straße, and I’ll see what else I can find that may be of use to you.”

  Lance left some money on the table and left the café. He was able to hail a taxi from Budapester Straße, and while he was in the cab, the exact location where the target had disappeared into the building was sent to his phone.

  Lance was armed with two fifth-generation Glock 17 semi-automatic pistols with sound-suppression. They’d been altered by the French military and were perfect when discretion was required.

  He got out of the cab close to the location he’d been sent and waited for the taxi to drive away. The street was completely empty, and he walked up and down the wall of the building, searching for any clue as to where the assassin had gone.

  The walls were of solid, chiseled limestone. Over fifty quarries had been used to supply the construction, and looking at the expanse of smooth stone in front of him, Lance could see why.

  The lower three feet of the wall had a travertine façade, and etched into it was an intricate crosshatch pattern. Lance examined the lines of the pattern more closely, it was difficult to see in the dim light, but there appeared to be even finer, vertical and horizontal lines inside the coarser crosshatching.

  If you knew what you were looking for, and Lance had a headstart, it was almost possible to make out the very faint outline of an entryway. It wasn’t a door, exactly. It was lower, rising from the concrete sidewalk upward about two feet. It almost looked like an old coal delivery chute, the kind used in the nineteenth century, but the building was too modern to require coal deliveries of that kind.

  There was no way anyone looking at the building, or walking by on the street, would ever have seen it.

  Lance pressed against it, and nothing happened. There was no sign of a handle or lock. He pressed against it, against each of the individual stones, then stepped back to get a look at it from a distance.

  And then he saw it, embedded into the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal crosshatched lines, he could make out, inscribed in a classic serif font, the letters HG.

  Hermann Göring.

  He’d been head of the German Aviation Ministry when the building was originally constructed.

  Beneath them was a smooth protuberance, about the size of the back of a soup spoon, and he pressed it.

  Nothing happened.

  He looked again, and this time, saw a foot above Göring’s initials, another pattern.

  AH.

  Adolf Hitler.

  And a second protuberance.

  He tried pressing them both simultaneously and heard the sound of a mechanical latch clanking against a steel plate. He pushed the wall again, and this time, it moved.

  It was heavy and suspended on heavy hinges, but it swung inward like an old letterbox.

  Lance looked up and down the street, which was still completely deserted, and then slid in through the opening.

  It was dark inside, and he used his cigarette lighter for light.

  He was in a service tunnel, large enough for a man to walk through at a hunch. He checked his phone to see if Roth had sent any more information, but he hadn’t.

  He proceeded along the corridor in the direction of the oldest portion of the Air Ministry Building. The corridor remained straight for about a hundred yards, then turned to the right and connected to what appeared to be an older set of tunnels. He followed the older tunnel, which ran steadily downward, until it came to a large, steel doorway, like the door to a bank vault.

  He turned a series of handles, and the door cranked open with a groan.

  The tunnel beyond the door was more cavernous, wide enough to drive a vehicle in, and he followed it for a few hundred yards until it opened up into a large chamber cut out of solid rock. Lance realized he was in an underground bunker built by the Nazis.

  56

  Zhukovsky looked over the names of the men on his list.

  They were the cream of the crop.

  The very best the GRU’s training facility in Saint Petersburg had to offer, and of the batch he’d been sent, he’d whittled the list down to just twenty-four men.

  And those men had been utterly brutalized. He’d put them through the meat grinder. They’d been subjected to torture and humiliation. They’d been forced to torture animals and prisoners from the prison in Pskov.

  He’d also made them kill prisoners.

  They’d done it in a number of ways.

  Holding them under water.

  Slitting their throats.

  Shooting them.

  It was grizzly work, and not all of the recruits could go through with it. And of those that could, fewer still had been able to do it to female prisoners.

  Zhukovsky had considered sending for children from the state orphanage in Ostrov, but he’d been afraid too many of them would fail that test.

  Kirov had said he’d need two squads, twenty-two men. He couldn’t afford to lose another dozen to weak stomachs. He was confident these men were up to the task he would set them, and was ready to tell Kirov as much.

  The base was remote, deep in the forested, marshy territory that marked the border region between Russia and Latvia, and that isolation was key. It had allowed Zhukovsky to conduct his training in a way that brought the men into a world of his making.

  It was a brutal place.

  A dark place.

  Many recruits died.

  All those who chose not to continue with the training had been murdered.

  The remaining men didn’t know it yet, but they were about to find out.

  Zhukovsky wanted there to be no doubt in their minds that the mission they were about to be given was essential. When they heard the details, they would balk. Their minds would rebel against it. They would need encouragement.

  He went out to the courtyard in front of his tent and had them assemble.

  “Men,” he barked, looking at them.

  They were a sullen lot now. Eyes downcast. Spirits crushed. Ready to do whatever they were told.

  There was a dump truck in the clearing, and Zhukovsky drew their attention to it.

  “I have an important cargo for you to see. The time for our operation is drawing near, and if any of you feel unable to carry out the orders that you are going to be given, I want you to know what the consequences look like.”

  Zhukovsky walked over to the truck and climbed up into the cab. He turned on the engine, then pressed the button to raise up the bed of the truck and tip out its contents. A dozen half-decomposed corpses, still in their military khakis, slid out of the truck and formed a pile on the ground.

  Zhukovsky got out of the truck. The rancid stench immediately assailed him, and he had to struggle not to gag. The corpses, even in the freezing weather, had decomposed to a state where larvae could be seen crawling in the eye sockets and mouths of the dead men.

  “You men continued with the regimen when these cowards opted out,” Zhukovsky said. “I know it’s been a difficult road, but we’re almost at the end of it, and the Motherland rewards those who sacrifice in her name. I’ve been authorized to pay each of you a bounty of fifty-thousand rubles for each kill you rack up on our upcoming operation.”

  The men knew nothing of the operation yet, but the fact that there would be killing went without saying.

  “Now bury the bodies,” he said to them.

  The ground was frozen solid, but the hard labor would do them good. He also wanted to make sure they got up close and personal with their former comrades. There could be no doubt in their minds that if they didn’t go through with their mission, only death awaited.

  What they didn’t know was that Zhukovsky had been ordered to kill them all after the operation anyway. Kirov wanted absolutely no chance that word of the operation would leak, and that meant there could be no witnesses.

  It was that matter that Zhukovsky meant to address now, and he went into his tent and told his orderly to leave him. Then he dialed Kirov’s number.

  “What is it, Zhukovsky? I’ve got enough on my min
d.”

  “The men are ready,” Zhukovsky said. “Two squads, as requested.”

  “They’re ready to do anything?” Kirov said.

  “Anything,” Zhukovsky confirmed.

  “Including women and children.”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “Very well. Then stand by for further orders. I’ll give you the go-ahead personally.”

  “There was one matter I wanted to bring up with you, sir, if I may,” Zhukovsky said.

  “What’s that, Zhukovsky?”

  “Liquidating the squads, sir. I think it’s a waste.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft,” Kirov said. “You of all people. I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “It’s not that, sir.”

  “You couldn’t care less about the lives of these men, and don’t try to tell me otherwise.”

  “No, sir, it’s a more practical concern. I’ve been overseeing their training personally, and I have to report, I’ve never seen killing squads like this in my life. They’re ready to do anything. In the right hands, they’ll prove to be a very valuable tool.”

  “I see,” Kirov said.

  “Very valuable, sir.”

  “I’ll pass your suggestion on to the president,” Kirov said.

  “Very good, sir.”

  “If there’s a change in the instructions, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But unless you hear otherwise, Zhukovsky, the existing order stands. All men are to be liquidated on return from the operation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  57

  Lance continued along the tunnel, down a set of steel steps, and into another large chamber. There, he found a very old wooden crate that still contained old Karabiner 98k Mausers. They’d been standard issue for the German Army during the Second World War, and it was clear they’d been there since Hitler’s days.

  It seemed the rumors were true. The tunnels really had been kept secret from the incoming German government after reunification.

  He went through the cavern, into another corridor, and down another long tunnel until he saw a faint glow in the distance. The smell of fumes filled the tunnel, and he heard a gasoline generator running.