by Mike Brogan
“And,” Rutten continued, rubbing the case’s soft leather, “my unique process makes the weapon undetectable, even by their most sophisticated instruments.” His grin revealed bad teeth that looked and smelled like rotten mushrooms.
“Well done, Herr Rutten.”
Stahl moved slightly behind the old man as Rutten brushed specks of dust from the case.
From his sleeve, Stahl removed a long syringe and eased it slowly up behind Rutten’s neck.
“Tell me more about it,” Stahl said.
Staring at his new creation, Rutten babbled on about its unique lethality and how, “The authorities will not anticipate it in a hundred years! And even if they get a hint, they will never be able to detect it!”
“Excellent, Herr Rutten.”
Rutten chuckled himself into a coughing fit. “Now, if I could just legally patent my detection-avoidance process, I’d make millions and retire.”
“Retiring makes sense. You’ve earned it.” Stahl said, easing the needle up toward Rutten’s neck.
Seconds later, Rutten seemed to notice the long, pointed shadow creeping across the leather case. He stopped talking.
As he started to turn, Stahl plunged the syringe into Rutten’s neck just above the hairline.
Rutten froze, blinked, then tried to reach up, but Stahl locked his scrawny arms to his sides. The old man’s face reddened. His arthritic knuckles bleached white as he gripped Stahl’s wrists. He flailed about for a few seconds, then his body went limp.
Stahl pulled the needle from Rutten’s neck and let his body drop to the floor. He checked Rutten’s pulse. Fast, erratic, weakening. The 300 mgs of potassium cyanide would more than enough to stop his aged heart in minutes. And because of Rutten’s advanced age and poor health, the medical examiner would probably see no reason to run toxicology tests.
Stahl watched Rutten’s eyes go blank and felt a strange sense of personal loss. Rutten had been his highly skilled resource for sixteen years. His partner in success. But killing the world’s eight most powerful leaders would eventually lead the Interpol and the police to Rutten’s door. The cops might persuade Rutten give up Stahl. No way that would happen.
Stahl waited until the old Nazi’s heart stopped, then carried him upstairs and laid him between the aisles. He wiped a spot of blood from Rutten neck hairline where he’d injected him. He then went back downstairs, wiped his fingerprints off everything he’d touched, grabbed the large leather case and went back upstairs. He shut the secret door to the lab, made sure the sign on the store entrance door read Geschlossen/Closed and left.
Outside, the cool fresh air invigorated him.
Across the street, the young cop he’d seen in front of the Kolner Dom Cathedral earlier was gone. But he did see the same two old women he’d seen yesterday chatting there.
The tall woman who looked at him yesterday, seemed to pay special attention to him again. She couldn’t possibly suspect him. Maybe she was watching Herr Rutten’s place. Or she was just a neighborhood busybody. He wasn’t worried.
He turned away and walked to his car.
Minutes later, he was driving the Autobahn back to Dusseldorf.
* * *
In his Dusseldorf apartment, Stahl placed Herr Rutten’s leather case into a three-by-two-foot pine storage trunk. On top of Rutten’s case, he placed a false bottom, then laid several layers of clothing on the false bottom. He carried the pine trunk to the garage. He started to put it in the car’s trunk, then realized the trunk was half filled, so he placed the pine trunk in the BMW’s back seat.
He drove off toward Brussels.
Fifty minutes later, Stahl approached the Belgian border. He was surprised to see cars backed up, since this was normally a non-stop drive-through border like many European Schengen-crossing countries. Officers were probably checking cars as part of extra security for the G8. Perhaps he should have squeezed the pine case into the trunk. Too late now.
A light rain began to dot the windshield. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Stahl watched the young male driver ahead hand his passport to the heavyset customs officer. The officer then handed it to an officer in the window of an adjacent building who scanned the passport into a computer that obviously checked his name against terrorist-watch lists.
Stahl wasn’t worried. He had a new passport and a set of ID with a name the authorities had never seen before.
Seconds later, the officer signaled the young man to pull his car over to an area where several other cars were being searched.
Stahl grew concerned.
The customs officer waived him forward and Stahl eased the BMW up beside him.
The officer glanced at Stahl’s German license plate and said in German, “Ihren Pass, bitte.”
Stahl handed him a German passport with the name Johannes Steinecker. The officer studied it, flipped through the pages, then flipped back through them again. After a few seconds he asked, “What is your destination, Herr Steinecker?”
“Antwerp.”
The officer checked the passport and began walking slowly alongside the car. He looked into the back seat area. The glass was tinted, but he appeared to study the pine trunk at length.
Stahl’s muscles tightened. If the officer demanded he unlock the pine trunk, he would. If the man found the false bottom and Rutten’s leather case beneath, Stahl would spray the guard’s face with Novichok. The deadly mist would incapacitate the officer instantly. Stahl would then shout that the guard was having a heart attack, which would be quite true.
And quite fatal… within seconds.
Stahl remembered how easily he’d purchased a stockpile of the secret Novichok nerve agent from a laid-off worker from Russia’s closed Chapayevsk plant.
The officer continued to look at the pine trunk. Finally, he walked back to Stahl.
“There’s a problem,” the officer said, still staring through the back window.
Stahl gripped the Novichok spray and raised it up close to the windowsill.
“A problem, officer?”
“Your molding. It’s loose on this window. Rain could get in.”
Stahl relaxed. “Oh, thanks officer.”
The border guard nodded and handed Stahl his passport. “You may proceed.”
Stahl drove into Belgium.
One hour and twenty minutes later, near the center of Brussels, Stahl turned onto Rue de la Plume. Halfway down the street, he pushed the garage opener and drove inside the garage. He closed the garage door, took the pine trunk out and entered the well-furnished living quarters he rented six months ago.
He opened the windows, turned on a ceiling fan, flipped on the television and began putting away his clothes. The TV screen flickered to life as U.S. President, John Colasanti, shook hands with Leo Van Caweuleart, Prime Minister of Belgium. The camera panned to show British Prime Minister Mary Ryan Kearns and her husband, Thomas, to French President Samuel de Batilly and his beautiful wife, Claude, the Italian President Angelo Miele, and the witty Canadian Prime Minister Marcel Marcotte. They all smiled and waved.
“Soon,” he whispered, “I will wipe the arrogance from your faces!”
TWENTY
Donovan smelled wet diapers.
Then he realized it was Gauloises, vile smelling French cigarettes, in the hotel conference room he, de Waha and Maccabee had just entered. Through the hazy smoke he saw his colleagues, the security directors for each G8 leader. This was their final pre-Summit review.
“Donovan, Jean, mes amis!” said Philippe Tournier, the slender, dark-haired director of Commissaire Divisonnaire of the GSPR, the no-nonsense, ninety-person secret service group protecting the French President, Samuel de Batilly.
“Welcome back, Donovan,” Philippe said, shaking hands.
“Thanks, Philippe” Donovan said, happy to see him and the others. Over the years, he’d developed excellent working relationships with most and considered them competent professionals and trusted friends.
�
�Gentlemen, meet Maccabee Singh. Her father, Professor Sohan Singh, translated the Sumerian message that uncovered this plot. And, as you know, he paid the ultimate price for that.
The group stood and took time to offer their condolences.
“Maccabee is continuing his work. She’s translating a recently intercepted Sumerian message that is much longer. So hopefully it will contain information that can help us stop Stahl. One warning though. She speaks most of your languages fluently – so please try to control your usual lewd and lascivious comments.”
“I like lewd and lascivious,” Maccabee said.
The directors smiled and seemed to relax.
“Let’s begin,” de Waha said.
Everyone sat around the long, mahogany table. Donovan watched their eyes grow dark as their ominous assignment descended on them like a thick black cloud.
“First of all,” de Waha said, “be aware - we face a brilliant, ruthless adversary. His birth name is Valek Stahl, but he’s also known as Katill and by several aliases, such as Horst Speerman, Pierre DuMaurier, Ernst Fleisher, Axel Braun and others, as you’ve read in his Interpol profile. We assume he’s already here in Brussels. Our only photo of him was taken seven years ago from a distance of seventy-five meters. That low-res photo is now being digitalized and age-enhanced by computers to give us a higher resolution photograph of him. Even so, chances are he’ll be in disguise, something he’s very good at. Wigs, collagen implants, plastic noses and so forth.”
Philippe Tournier said, “I heard Stahl once posed as an elderly nun in a wheelchair and killed two Israelis hiding in the convent.”
“True. He also killed the Mother Superior and the priest who hid them.”
Werner Vogler, the tall, handsome director of the German Chancellor’s security team, raised his hand. “Does the situation with Stahl change any of our security responsibilities?”
“No,” de Waha said. “You each have yours, protecting your leader. We have ours. Belgian Security still has overall G8 responsibility. We’ve brought in 12,000 federal and local uniformed police, plus 1,000 security guards who’ve set up perimeters around the leaders and their events. In addition, we have several thousand army and national guard troops ready to control any trouble from protest demonstrations.”
“Which ones do you expect trouble from?”
“The usual suspects. The anti-capitalists groups, the anarchist groups, the anti-war, anti-world hunger, anti-Wall Street and the anti-everything groups.”
“That many groups?” Tournier asked.
“Yes. They’ve promised to show up.”
“How polite of them to warn us.”
“Yeah. And of course, Donovan and I will be working in liaison with each of your secret security teams protecting your national leaders.”
De Waha turned to Donovan. “Donovan will now fill us in on what we know.”
“Which is damn little,” Donovan said, leaning on the table.
For the next twenty minutes, he explained everything he knew about the plot. Maccabee showed them a copy of an ancient Sumerian note and asked if they’d seen or heard about similar messages. No one had.
After Donovan finished, the group reviewed the security for each Summit event, identifying potential gaps of security and how those gaps had in theory been closed. When they finished, Donovan sensed they were well prepared for the most likely and predictable attacks: automatic weapons, explosives, biological and chemical weapons.
There was only one problem.
Stahl never did the predictable. His previous attacks were unique. Donovan feared the man had come up with another undetectable, unpredictable weapon delivery system. A one of a kind system so ingenious they might never suspect it.
De Waha stood up. “Breakfast in this room at 6:30 tomorrow morning.”
The group nodded and left.
Donovan, Jean and Maccabee walked down to the elevator.
“I’m expecting the pictograms I need from the USA any minute,” Maccabee said. “I’ll go work on the Sumerian message. If all goes well, I should have the message translated by morning.”
“Terrific.”
“What if I translate it sooner?”
“Call my cell immediately. No matter what time.”
“I will.”
“I’ll walk you to your bodyguard.”
“Thanks.”
Jean de Waha tapped Donovan’s shoulder. “When you’re done, meet me in the bar. I’m concerned about tomorrow’s palace dinner.”
“Okay.”
The elevator opened. Donovan and Maccabee went up to her floor and got off. Ahead he saw Theo, the muscular guard, a former pro rugby player, seated beside her door.
Theo wore a dark-blue suit stretched tightly over his thick chest and shoulders. His short brown hair and steel gray eyes gave him a no-nonsense military look. In fact, Donovan knew that Theo was Belgian Special Forces member who’d trained with the US Navy SEALs at Virginia Beach. And rumor was, he’d once singlehandedly wiped out four Al Qaeda terrorists planning to blow up a US-built medical center for women near Kabul. Theo confirmed what Caesar once said: ‘The Belgians are the bravest of all the Gauls.’
“I’ll be right here,” Theo said to Maccabee in flawless English. “If you need anything, just let me know.” He rubbed an L-shaped white scar on his cheek.
“Thanks, Theo.”
Maccabee walked toward her door, Donovan following. She stopped a little too abruptly and he couldn’t help but bump into her.
“Whoops!” he said.
“No, my whoops! I just wanted to say thanks again for letting me help.”
“We thank you, Maccabee.”
They smiled at each other and in that brief moment, Donovan felt something shift in him. A nice shift. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something emotional and big, some kind of tectonic plate had shifted in his psyche. He was sure of one thing: he was no longer looking at her as just the daughter of his good friend.
“So, will we see you at our breakfast meeting?”
“You will.”
Again, he felt the shift… a shift that he realized she might be reading in his eyes. What the hell is going on here?
“See you then,” he said, leaving quickly.
* * *
At the other end of the hallway, Benoit Broutifache pretended to search for a room key as Donovan Rourke headed toward the elevator and Maccabee Singh entered her room.
The big guard sat near her door and read his newspaper. Probably some rent-a-cop boozer picking up extra cash.
Broutifache walked the other way, then stepped into a hotel service room. He stepped behind a tall rack of towels and sheets and quickly took his gun’s firing pin from his key chain and fitted the pin back into his plastic Glock.
Then he waited.
Several minutes later, a room service waiter pushed a cart with silver covered food trays into the room, took some clean linen napkins from a rack and placed them on the cart. The food smell good.
“What’s for dinner?” Broutifache asked.
The startled waiter spun around and stared into the barrel of the Glock.
TWENTY ONE
The Amigo Bar went graveyard quiet.
Donovan turned and saw why. Maccabee. She and Theo were plowing through a group of slightly inebriated car dealers from Norway.
A young blond dealer, name-tagged Bjorn, offered her his whiskey and barstool. She declined both with a smile. Bjorn looked sad, but handled it well.
Theo led her over to the private corner booth where Donovan and de Waha sat. She took a sheet of paper from a folder and placed it on the table. “I just finished this.”
Donovan and Jean read her translation silently.
ARRIVED AT NORTH COUNTRY. OUR
TEAM HERE NOW. THE MEDUSA IS
IN PLACE, TESTED, OPERATIONAL,
UNDETECTABLE. MEDUSA WILL
DELIVER ALL EIGHT INFIDEL HEADS.
UPON DELIVERY, BALANCE OF
TWENTY-
FIVE MUST ARRIVE AT BANK
WITHIN ONE DAY. NO EXCEPTIONS.
THE MEDUSA MAKER WILL PERISH. NO
FURTHER CONTACT UNTIL SECOND
MOON OF NEXT YEAR.
K
“Team!” Donovan said, concerned.
De Waha nodded. “The K must stand for Katill.”
“Yes, but Katill, Valek Stahl, never works with a team! He’s a lone wolf!”
They thought about that for a few moments.
“But obviously” Donovan said, “this assignment requires some helpers.”
De Waha nodded.
“Where was this sent from?” Donovan asked.
“Dusseldorf.”
“To where?”
“Here in Brussels. Also to Manhattan, and to some island in the Caribbean.”
“Was it e-mailed, text-messaged?”
“Faxed!”
Donovan was not all that surprised by the fax delivery. More terrorist groups were faxing because the NSA, the FBI’s Cyber Division, and other government ‘listening’ agencies were rumored to be concentrating their resources on the newer tech communications. Cell phones, Internet traffic, and texting, Facebook and Twitter, and e-mail drafts read by two people but never sent, even messages-hidden-in-a-photo steganography. But faxes were also monitored.
“He probably figured faxing would not draw our attention,” Donovan said.
De Waha nodded.
Donovan said, “Al Qaeda now combines high tech with high flying tech.”
“How?”
“They tape flash-drives to carrier pigeons that fly from cell to cell.”
De Waha shook his head.
“Where were Katill’s faxes picked up?”
“A library here in Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, and the Mid-Manhattan library in New York City. Public access fax machines. Anyone could have picked them up.”
Donovan looked up and saw Werner Vogler, Germany’s intelligence director for the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the BND, hurrying over to their table.
“We’ve got something,” Vogler said, breathing hard. “Last night in Dusseldorf, a former East German Stasi policewoman was standing near the Kolner Dam Cathedral. She saw a man who looked like Stahl come out of Rutten’s Antique Shop. She’s been watching Herr Rutten’s shop for two years because she and her ex-boss long suspected him of making weapons, probably explosives. She got a tip that Rutten made explosives for a neo-Nazi group, then for Hamas and the PLO, later for Al Qaeda. But no evidence was ever found until last night.”