Joachim left his car parked at the side of the building and went inside. He scanned the interior out of habit. Several men and women with phone headsets sat at tables with notebook computers open before them, doing business around the world.
Pitor Schultz sat in the back at a small table with an inlaid chessboard. He was reading a paper. In his forties, small and shaggy looking, he was a man who would be overlooked in most occasions out on the street or in a crowd. Gray tinted the hair at his temples. His nose was too large for his face and, combined with the thick mustache that looked like a fat caterpillar, lent him a homely look that made him appear unthreatening to most women and vulnerable to most men. He wore a trench coat and a suit.
After getting a cup of coffee, Joachim joined Schultz at his table.
Schultz put the paper away and looked up expectantly. “Well?”
“What?” Joachim asked.
Folding his hands patiently, Schultz said, “You called this meeting.”
“No,” Joachim said, more calmly than he felt. The walls were closing in on him. “You did. I got a text message.”
“So did I.” Schultz pushed himself up from the chair. His eyes surveyed the room.
“I tried calling you to confirm.” Joachim stood. Every survival sense inside him was screaming to get moving. “Your line was busy.”
“So was yours. I don’t like walking into a situation unprepared.” Schultz jerked his chin to the rear of the coffee shop. “There’s a back entrance we can—”
Suddenly, Schultz jerked backward, half turning as a high-powered bullet hit him in the left side of his chest. Time slowed down for Joachim as his brain leaped into overdrive. Blood spilled out from Schultz’s chest. Pain filled his blocky face. He fell backward, arms flung out to the sides. He grabbed hold of a nearby chair and spilled a man in a suit from it.
Then the sound of the rifle shot invaded the coffee shop. Everyone in the neighborhood knew what the sound was. Screaming and cursing, patrons dived to the floor.
Joachim ripped his pistol free of the shoulder holster under his jacket and knelt beside Schultz.
The BND agent coughed and wheezed once, then shivered and went still. His eyes took on the thousand-yard stare Joachim had seen so many times before.
He’s dead! Joachim screamed to himself. He tried not to remember that Schultz had been a family man. He couldn’t remember if the agent had two small children at home or three. Move!
Staying low, the pistol held out at the ready, Joachim headed for the back door.
Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women
Outside Athens, Arizona
“Lenin’s Lullaby?” Elle asked.
Sam nodded.
They were back in the bungalow Christine Evans had made available to them. The school’s principal had even sent over a care basket filled with jams, crackers, chocolate and fruit.
Elle had rummaged through it already, unable to simply sit and wait for her sister’s return. Now she was irritated with herself for having delved into the basket. It was a weakness, and she hated being weak. However, normally she had a cause-and-effect relationship with situations she found herself in—she was used to taking action instead of being on hold.
“That’s what the nerve agent was called,” Sam said. “Is called, I suppose I should say.”
“There’s no doubt our parents were the ones who sold this nerve toxin to the East Germans?” Elle said.
“Yes. To two men.” Sam seated her iPAQ into the cradle that connected the device to her notebook computer. “Alex and Allison gave me their files.”
“Awfully kind of them.” Elle still felt the sting of the rejection she’d unexpectedly faced. She didn’t want to acknowledge it, but the feelings kept surfacing.
Sam turned to her, looking somewhat put out. “Elle, I don’t agree with what they did. You had as much right to know about this as I do, which is what I told them.”
“But they didn’t want you to, Sam,” Elle said. They spoke in Russian.
“No,” Sam agreed. “So do you want to deal with that or with the nerve toxin issue?”
“Both.” Elle sighed. “But it’s too late to deal with your friends.”
Sam concentrated on the computer. “This is Klaus Stryker.”
Elle studied the harsh face on the screen. Stryker had a broad forehead and deep-set eyes. Black hair framed his fleshy face. His thin-lipped mouth had a cruel set to it.
“Who is he?” Elle pulled a chair over and sat in front of the notebook computer.
“According to the files Alex and Allison got,” he was the man who supposedly brokered the deal.”
Quickly, Elle read the thumbnail biography. Twenty years ago, Klaus Stryker had been thirty-two years old. He’d joined the Stasi at eighteen, then worked his way up through the ranks by being brutal and efficient, and delivering whatever his commanding officers wanted. Eventually he had become a go-between for espionage deals.
When he’d been paid the right amount of money and there was little risk involved, he’d escorted defecting East German scientists and spies through Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, he had shot four of the people he’d been paid to escort when they were discovered escaping while he was nearby. No investigation by his people had ever found him guilty of wrongdoing, but the suspicion was there and he had been closely watched. The CIA had a file on him, too, and they had considered him a risk to deal with.
An investigation by a Stasi junior officer had turned up information about the nerve toxin purchase. Boris and Anya Leonov had approached Stryker to set up an arrangement. For other parties to purchase the bioweapon.
“Where did the toxin come from?” Elle asked.
“A facility outside of Odessa.”
Elle knew the Odessa area. Located on the Black Sea,
Odessa had started life as an outlaw town filled with pirates and shady deals. It remained so to this day. “Transportation through Odessa could have been easily arranged.”
“I know,” Sam said.
But you’re working on secondhand information, Elle thought irritably. You’ve never been there.
“Our parents were killed outside of Moscow,” Elle said.
Sam flipped through the photo archive and showed the file pictures of the twisted wreckage of their parents’ car. The vehicle had taken an almost direct hit from a rocket launcher.
For the first time since she’d heard about her parents’ murders, Elle realized how brutal they had been. Boris and Anya had never had a chance.
“It was an execution,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Sam said. “And we’re going to find the person responsible.
Elle nodded. Given who they were, that was a certainty.
Chapter 13
Downtown Leipzig, Germany
Cold rain swept the city, pouring down from the dark clouds that filled the night. Neon signs from taverns, restaurants and office businesses that kept late hours reflected against the wet street. Tires of the passing cars whickered through the water. Passersby were few and far between, usually young people and determined tourists out to soak up the nightlife.
Collar turned up against the wetness, Joachim leaned into the public phone outside a convenience store whose windows were filled with paper advertisements.
Krista answered on the first ring. Her voice was tight with fear and excitement.
“There’s not much time,” Joachim said.
“The police have been by,” his sister said. “They’re saying you killed a man.”
“I didn’t. I was set up.” Suddenly, the enormity of everything that faced him hit Joachim. His family, whom he had struggled all his life to keep out of harm’s way, was suddenly on the firing line and he couldn’t get to them. Anger and nausea whirled inside his stomach. His hand holding the phone shook.
“What happened?” Krista asked.
“There’s no time,” Joachim said. “The police have already tracked this phone connection.
They’ll be here in minutes. I’ve got to leave.”
“All right.”
“Remember when we set up your escape route?”
“Yes.”
“Do that,” Joachim said. “Now.”
“But the police—”
“The police are the least of our worries.” Joachim was lying and hoped that his sister couldn’t hear that in his voice. “I was set up by someone else.” He still had no clue who. “Someone who won’t hesitate to kill you.”
“Joachim, the police said if you would just turn yourself in—”
“If I turn myself in or get caught by the police,” Joachim interrupted, “they’ll kill you.”
“But—”
Joachim made his voice cold and hard. “They will kill Brita. Do you want to see your daughter dead? Have you got a tiny coffin picked out for her?”
Krista exploded then, cursing him violently in German and English.
The words dug into Joachim and hurt him deeply. Even if he could somehow fix this situation, his mother and sister would never forgive him. “Go,” he said hoarsely. “As far and as fast as you can.”
“Take care of yourself, Joachim,” Krista said. “Come back to us when you can.”
“I will,” he promised. Then he made himself hang up the phone and got moving.
Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women
Outside Athens, Arizona
“Stryker went to Russia under an assumed name with all the proper identification and documentation,” Sam said. “Getting forged papers in those days wasn’t hard, just expensive.”
Elle knew that. Those days were not actually far away. “Stryker traveled to Moscow to kill our parents?”
“Yes.”
“Who found that out?”
“The Moscow police department.” Sam moved on to more electronic documents that included handwritten and typed reports in Cyrillic. All of them were on Moscow police department stationary. “After the fact. Although they didn’t have his name. They weren’t able to penetrate the false ID. But look at the pictures.”
Elle watched the monitor as Sam split the screen and put the ID pictures side by side. There was no doubt that they were the same man.
“How did the Moscow police identify Stryker’s false ID?” Elle asked.
“An informer’s tip.” Sam grimaced. “As it turned out, the CIA had a loose tail on Stryker because they’d caught a whisper of the nerve toxin exchange. Stryker was supposed to be one of the players. The agent followed Stryker into Moscow and was on hand when he killed our parents. That’s where the pictures come from.”
Elle didn’t ask Sam why she hadn’t looked up the file years ago. Until nineteen months ago, Sam had had no clue who her parents were.
“The CIA agent didn’t try to stop the murder?” Elle asked.
“The agent stated in his report that there wasn’t time to act without betraying his cover,” Sam said.
“This,” Elle said, “is some kind of business we’re in, isn’t it?”
“I know. I tell myself it’s better now. Riley tells me that, too. But, some days, I don’t know.”
“Do we know where Stryker is? We could pay him a visit.”
“Stryker’s dead,” Sam answered.
That surprised Elle and made her feel curiously hollow. “How?”
“Only days after he killed our parents, Stryker was killed by Arnaud Beck.”
“Beck? You’re sure?” The sudden turn caught Elle off guard. She had just learned the name of her parents’ murderer, had only started thinking about revenge, and already the opportunity to avenge them had slipped through her fingers.
“I’m having Riley check on it for me, but I think he’s only going to confirm what Alex and Allison have found out through their sources.”
Disappointment and frustration vibrated inside Elle. “Why did Beck kill Stryker?”
“The story was put together after the fact and might all be conjecture. Maybe there was another reason. Stryker made plenty of enemies. Beck was believed to be Stryker’s silent partner in the nerve toxin purchase. Evidently Stryker tried to cut Beck out of the deal. Beck killed him in retaliation. He burned Stryker to death in a car while people watched.”
“Do we know where to find Beck?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
Sam looked uncomfortable. “Allison and Alex would like me to follow up on this,” Sam said. “But I’m not going to do it without you. Unless you don’t want in.”
“Aren’t you worried that your friends might get annoyed if I tag along?”
“You’re my sister. Boris and Anya were your parents, too. Arnaud Beck is a homicidal maniac. A very smart, very vicious homicidal maniac.” Sam let out a breath and unconsciously squared her shoulders. “Do you really want to fight when I’m on your side?”
Stated bluntly, Sam’s question took away some of the angry edge Elle was feeling. “No. I don’t want to fight.” She looked back at the screen. “You’ve told your friends that I will be accompanying you?”
“Yes.”
“They were in favor of that?”
“No.”
Elle smiled. “I didn’t think they would be.”
“This investigation is sensitive,” Sam said. “It’s hitting close to home. Whoever this ‘A’ person is—”
Madame Web, Elle thought, and realized she had no right faulting Sam for being reticent when she wasn’t being exactly straightforward herself.
“—he or she is good at covering tracks.”
“They didn’t get any information from Tuenis Meijer?”
“He confirmed that he did the work, but he didn’t know who he was working with. Then or now.”
“He’s still working with the blackmailer?” That intrigued Elle.
Sam regarded her quietly. “Yes. He is.”
“You said there was a second man involved in the toxin transaction.” Elle focused on the notebook computer.
“Yes. His name is Alexi Zemanov.” Sam tapped the keyboard and brought up a picture of a man with light brown hair and gray eyes. In his late fifties, he looked tan and fit, but a thin scar sliced from the corner of his left eye to his jawline.
“He’s Russian?”
“Yes. He was a member of the Biopreparat stationed at the Odessa lab. According to the intel, Boris and Anya stole Lenin’s Lullaby from under his nose and he was sent to Siberia for allowing the theft to happen.”
“How did our parents do that?”
“They were friends with Zemanov.”
Elle studied the man’s face. Her adoptive father had never mentioned the man. Fyodor Petrenko had talked a lot about Elle’s parents when they were alone and she’d had questions about them. She remembered, and had met, other friends of her parents, but she didn’t recall Zemanov’s name being mentioned. Were her parents the kind of people who betrayed their friends?
“Where is Zemanov?” Elle asked.
“We don’t know,” Sam admitted.
Elle sat and quietly contemplated everything she’d learned. “What are you going to do?”
“Lenin’s Lullaby may still be out there,” Sam said. “Either it was destroyed, or someone took possession of the nerve agent after Stryker was killed.”
“You think it was Beck?”
“He was there.”
“If he had tried to sell it on an international market, then someone would have known about it.”
“I know,” Sam said. “The CIA was already watching the action going on around the bioweapon. Beck killed Stryker that night, then set up business in the Caribbean. Since then he’s moved around a lot. Somewhere between that night and now, Lenin’s Lullaby disappeared.”
“If it ever existed at all,” Elle said.
Sam glanced at her sharply. “What do you mean by that?”
“Our two countries are presently at peace, Sam, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their disagreements. Oil, economics and world presence still div
ide us on several fronts.”
Sam spoke carefully. “The United States government is trying to do what it thinks is necessary around the world.”
“Necessary for who?” Elle asked. She shook her head. “You’ve been indoctrinated in this country’s schools and culture too long to get a proper view of it. If you truly want to see what the United States is like, you’d have to live elsewhere and look at this country through someone else’s eyes.”
Frowning, Sam leaned back a little. “I believe in my country, Elle.”
Elle waved to the bungalow around them. “If I had been schooled in this place, taught to look at things the way you’ve obviously been taught to regard them, maybe I would feel the same way.”
“Another argument?” Sam asked.
“Another point of view,” Elle responded. “I believe in my country, too, and I don’t believe it has any more faults than your own.” She paused and felt bad about the tension that had sprung up between them again. “Life has more than one answer. That’s all I’m saying.”
“We chose careers that deal in absolutes.”
“Only if that’s how you want to deal with it.” Elle shifted gears. “So you believe Beck is the answer to this?”
“He’s the only one left alive who might know the whole story.”
Elle nodded. “Finding him sounds like a good plan. A dangerous one, though. Beck very nearly killed us in Amsterdam.”
Sam smiled. “I know. But you’ll be there with me. And this time we’ll be hunting him. He can’t escape both of us.”
In spite of her mood, Elle grinned. There was a lot, she’d decided, that she and Sam had in common. A certain amount of fearlessness and tenacity, and cockiness. Both of them, it seemed, also had a penchant for the adrenaline afforded from their respective careers.
“All right then,” Elle said. “We’ll hunt Beck.” She offered Sam a chocolate.
Sam took the candy then looked through the basket Christine Evans had sent. “Don’t tell me you ate all the white chocolate.”
Elle feigned innocence. A love of white chocolate was another thing they shared. “There weren’t many of them. They were gone before I knew it.”
Before Sam could deliver whatever scathing remark had occurred to her, the cell phone in her pocket rang. She answered it, brightened immediately and said hello to Riley, then turned somber as she listened. She told Riley goodbye and put the phone away.
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