12 Drummers Drumming

by Diana Deverell

  “We?”

  “Yes. You and me and Hans and Bert. Also, Danièle and Hilly-Anne. They are on their way to join us.”

  “The six of us? We can’t go against Krüger.”

  “You give Krüger too much credit. Don’t ignore our successes. We’ve unmasked him. Thwarted all his attempts to kill Stefan. Forced him to work through you to escape the Mossad.” Erika’s fingers curved around my palm. Her hand was warm in mine, the skin smooth, the fingers slender. I smelled her shampoo, lemon and sunshine. Her grip on my hand tightened. “We can rescue your father.”

  There was such power in her voice, such warmth in her touch. Hope thudded in me. The air in the room felt the way it does before a thunderstorm, protons and neutrons jittery with incipient chaos.

  Something tapped lightly against the door. I jumped. Erika slid her chair back and hurried to the entry. She checked the peephole, then unbolted the door and drew it open.

  Icy air sliced through the room. Bert stepped across the threshold, stomping his boots to dislodge grit. He crossed toward us. As he passed behind my chair, he brushed my shoulder with his fingers. “You’re back” was all he said, but the relief in his voice gave his light touch the weight of an embrace. He pulled open the refrigerator door and began setting packages on the counter next to the hot plate.

  Van Hoof followed him inside. When he reached me, he slapped a stack of papers on the table.

  “Bert and Hans made a call on my friends,” Erika said, taking the chair beside mine. She raised an eyebrow at van Hoof. “They were helpful?”

  Bert answered. “Went like you said it would.” He waved a dark brown loaf of bread at her. “Assholes didn’t want to talk to us. Especially not about Casey’s dad.” He thumped the loaf onto the breadboard, then tore the butcher’s wrapping from a dozen dappled bratwurst. “The major, though, he’s good at that. Getting people to talk to him.”

  Chair legs grated against the concrete as van Hoof seated himself across from me. “These fellows, they’re young, eager. They forget that we old soldiers know a thing or two. I gave them a short lesson in respect.” He shook his head. “They knew your father was in Berlin. Had it in their records.”

  I fanned through the papers on the table. No red-stamped CONFIDENTIAL marked them. But they were intelligence files. Surveillance reports. Photocopies of records kept by border officials. Smeared carbons of hotel registrations showing which guests had foreign passports. The written record of the Mossad’s efforts to track movement in and out of Berlin.

  Behind me, Bert was busily putting together a late supper, like a mother who delays feeding the family until all the children are safely home. The lights were at the level of his torso, brightly illuminating his dirt-specked sweater, casting a glow upward onto the spiky stubble of his beard. He spoke over the sputter of bratwurst heating in a skillet. “Little prick made a lot of pissy remarks about amateurs. I told him it was real amateurish, letting Casey give ’em the slip that way.”

  Erika frowned at me. “How did you evade the team Bert sent after you?”

  I explained how I’d ditched the pair in the alley. “Brunhild should never have gotten out from behind the wheel.”

  “Brunhild?” Erika asked.

  “She looked like a Brunhild—so tall, with all that braided hair coiled on top of her head.”

  Erika’s expression grew more intent. “The man with her— was he short and heavy?”

  “He didn’t get out of the car. But he was short,” I said, recalling what I’d seen in the rearview mirror. “His chin was hidden by the dash.”

  “Assassins.” Erika’s word hung in the air like a curse. “They sent their best hit team in with you.”

  Van Hoof said, “Interrogating Krüger was never their goal.” The glaring light sharpened the contrast between his bronzed skin and black hair, so that the anger in his face had a brutal edge to it. “They had the evidence they needed to convict him. All that remained was the execution.”

  “You didn’t know they were using me to get to Krüger?” I asked Erika.

  “No,” she said. “I wanted to stop him from blowing up any more planes. Capture him, then interrogate him. But obviously, at least some of the Israelis think terminating him is the wiser course.”

  I said, “Krüger’s got the next bombing all planned. It’s not likely that killing him will stop it.”

  “You know that?” van Hoof asked.

  “That’s my analysis of the situation. Based on the Lockerbie Two incident and what I’ve learned about Krüger.” The vocabulary of my job sounded strange here. The words didn’t convey the daunting nature of the intelligence I’d acquired. My hopefulness vanished, replaced by icy despair. I struggled to keep my voice level. “I can’t prove it. The Mossad reached a different conclusion. Either their analysts doubt another incident is planned or they’re confident they can find the device before it explodes. They see no risk in executing Krüger.”

  “We underestimated him,” Erika said. “The Mossad has made the same mistake.”

  For a moment, the only sound in the room was the popping of fat in the skillet. Then Bert said to Erika, “That little prick claimed he didn’t realize Victor Collins had any connection to Kathryn Collins. Like you said he would.” He laughed. “Won’t pull that crap again, not on us.”

  Van Hoof bent toward me, his hand on the papers. “They didn’t bother to inform us. Your father arrived in Berlin on Friday. January first.” He pointed to a registration slip from a new luxury hotel a few blocks from Alexanderplatz.

  Krüger had housed my father like a well-heeled tourist. “That fits with the ploy Krüger used to get him to Germany.”

  “Then your dad’s probably still there,” Bert said. “Along with that pair we saw with him in Potsdam.” Deftly, he plunged a stainless-steel knife into the bread. I smelled the heavy sourness of sliced pumpernickel. “We’ve got him, then,” he said to van Hoof.

  “The girls are coming from Antwerp?” van Hoof asked Erika.

  “They’ll arrive tomorrow,” she said.

  “Ideal chambermaids,” van Hoof said, and his sharp-edged grin was wolfish, a predator who’d stumbled on a poorly protected flock of sheep.

  “Good thinking,” Bert told Erika, and appreciation flavored his tone. “Sending us to shake up your ex-friends. Sending for those girls.” He lifted a white dinner plate from the china stack and forked bratwurst onto it.

  Erika stood and took the plate from him. “You and Hans also did well, bringing all this data back to us.” She added a slice of bread to the plate and passed it to me.

  Van Hoof handed me a knife and fork. “I have some excellent ideas how we can extract your father from there.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. He shared Erika’s fantasy, that we could defeat Krüger. Our ragtag bunch against Lucifer? I shut my mouth without speaking. My father was Krüger’s prisoner. Soon I would be, too. Why bother to argue with van Hoof?

  He took a filled plate from Erika and bent over it. If defeat showed on my face, van Hoof didn’t see it.

  Erika and Bert joined us at the table. I looked down at my meal. The sausage was marked by stripes of dark brown, dotted with drops of fat. It smelled of garlic and thyme, the scent so rich it made me light-headed. The other three ate European-style, using their knives to pile meat and bread onto their forks, efficiently clearing their plates.

  I shivered. Chilly air currents flowed from the dim corners of the room, slid beneath the table, wrapped themselves around my legs. My lower body was going numb. My brain felt numb, too, anesthetized against the horror of what I had to do. I picked up my fork and made a weak stab at the sausage. It slid to the other side of my plate, leaving a shiny trail across the porcelain. I laid the fork down. Eating was too difficult.

  Bert saw my untouched meal. He reached behind him and snagged a glass jar off the counter. “Needs mustard.” He unscrewed the lid, jammed a spoon into the jar and slid it to me. “My own recipe.”

  U
nable to refuse, I spooned mustard onto my plate.

  “Try it.” Bert beamed at me, waiting.

  Reluctantly, I cut a sliver off the sausage and dipped it in the puddle of yellow brown, then raised the meat to my mouth. I smelled mustard, then felt the miniature seeds roll over my tongue. I tasted vinegar made from exotic fruit and a fiery spice that glowed, emberlike, in my mouth. The heat swelled, cascaded down my throat, spread out across my midsection. Sweat beaded around my eyes. I felt the noonday sun on my face, the air as hot and moist as it is at sea level in the tropics.

  “What is it?” I asked Bert.

  “Pili-pili is the secret ingredient,” he said. “I call this mustard ‘jungle love.’ ” He leered at me. “You find yourself feeling romantic later, remember, I’m available.”

  I choked on my sausage, started to cough.

  Bert peered at me. Had I once thought those eyes were ice-blue? Nothing icy in them now when he looked at me. He winked. “Made you smile,” he said. “That’s a start.”

  I wiped my eyes and said, “Great stuff.”

  Erika made a sound too dainty to be called a grunt, yet the satisfaction in it was animal. She reached for the jar. “Let’s see if this pili-pili has an equally good effect on me.”

  Good effect? But she was right. As if I’d come back from the dead.

  Suddenly, I was ravenous. All that warmth inside me. And around me. I’d been cold, paralyzed with cold. As if Krüger’s icy heart had frozen my own. Spiritless, I’d undervalued the forces at work on my behalf. Krüger’s victory wasn’t certain. The struggle with him wasn’t over, not yet. I wasn’t alone.

  I cleared my throat again. “You think we can rescue my father?”

  They all heard it.

  Van Hoof grinned. “ ‘We’?”

  Bert said, “Piece of cake. Getting your dad out of a hotel, be like a kid’s game for me and the major.”

  Erika leaned toward me. “We will require some support from the Mossad. But now we know they have a different agenda. We are prepared. Rescuing your father is our priority. You can be sure of that.” Her fingers touched mine again.

  Again, that shock.

  This time it felt like renewal.

  “Okay,” I said. “Then let’s get things rolling. Let’s send that message to Harry.”

  “Eat first,” Bert said sternly.

  So I did.

  But as soon as I finished, I rechecked my request for the Wednesday jet, and Erika summoned a courier to take it away for transmission. Then she and Bert and van Hoof and I went to work.

  We confirmed that my father was still registered at the same hotel and we roughed out a plan to get to him. Nothing fancy, the six of us entering the hotel in various guises, then converging on my father’s room when the hallways were crowded with staff and other guests. The combination of surprise and a ready audience would work to our advantage.

  While van Hoof double-checked the hotel’s layout and schedules against reports from someone who’d been inside, Bert pulled together the clothing and weapons we’d need. Erika went to the Mossad safe house to collect the latest intelligence and make sure my message had gone to Harry.

  I had only one task to perform in the operation. When we got inside my father’s room, I had to instantly convince him to come with me. Simple, but critical.

  I found my down jacket and winter boots stacked with my few personal items on a cot in one of the partitioned-off rooms. I carried my toothbrush with me to the cramped lavatory, fantasizing about a steaming shower, foaming body wash and fresh underwear still warm from the clothes dryer. None of that was available this night. As soon as my father was safe, I’d figure out how to get clean again. Then I’d figure out how to get to Stefan. I wanted to ask him why he’d kept Krüger a secret from me. I hoped—I prayed—he would have a good answer.

  I returned to the cot and tried to sleep. I needed to be ready to do my part. Our plan wasn’t foolproof, but with careful attention to detail and a little luck, we’d have my father safely under our care by noon.

  But at ten o’clock that morning, the whole thing fell apart.

  21

  I woke up to a lousy taste in my mouth and the news that my father was on the move. The Mossad’s watcher at the hotel had reported that Victor Collins had boarded the airport limousine bound for Schönefeld. Luckily, Erika was at Mossad headquarters when the message came in. She realized instantly what my father’s unexpected travel meant. Krüger had given up his hostage—and his shield—and abandoned any plan to seek safe haven in the U.S. She grabbed the phone and called van Hoof. He roused me and, ten minutes later, we were racing toward Schönefeld.

  We had to assume that Krüger would carry out his threat. We had to stop my father from boarding an American carrier. We had to keep him off a doomed flight.

  Bert drove the Mercedes taxi. Van Hoof and I were his passengers, dressed once again in our blue coveralls and yellow hard hats. We got to the airport ahead of the limo from downtown. Bert waited outside the terminal for Erika. They’d spot my father when the limo arrived. Bert would follow him in; Erika would have the car ready when I brought him out.

  Van Hoof and I strolled inside and placed ourselves in the coffee shop, trying to look like members of the remodeling crew taking a break. By the time we’d been there ten minutes, my knuckles were red against the dull silver of the coffee spoon, my body rigid with the effort to appear relaxed.

  “Lufthansa to Frankfurt. First call for boarding.” The woman’s voice was musical, but her Teutonic enunciation of the English turned the mundane announcement into a command. “Passengers will proceed directly to Gate Thirty-two.”

  I bowed my head over the cup, resisting the urge to study the faces of everyone who passed.

  Van Hoof made a casual eye-sweep of the area in front of us. “If he wants to make that flight, he’ll have to go straight to the gate. You know what to do.”

  I repeated the words he’d drilled into me. “I intercept him before he reaches the metal detector. You take care of his watchers. I get him outside to Erika.”

  I stirred the coffee, concentrating on not slopping any from the cup. I couldn’t drink it, pour caffeine on top of the adrenaline overloading my system.

  “Get him out as quickly as you can,” van Hoof said. “And remember: Krüger may have people outside.”

  “And Interpol may have shown my picture to everyone inside. Enough. I know the odds.”

  Van Hoof’s chair legs scraped against the tiles. “Here he comes.”

  I stood. The electrician’s belt shifted on my hips, and the wire cutters clicked against the ball peen hammer. I let my gaze wander across the concourse. I sucked in air. There.

  A hundred feet to my right, my father shambled toward the short line in front of the security checkpoint. He was bareheaded, his hair like a drift of white feathers across his pink scalp. His gray raincoat was the same style he’d always worn, two-inch buttons holding it closed across his chest. He was canted to the left, weighed down on that side by a white plastic bag, the largest size from some duty-free shop, blazing a three-color ad for Prince cigarettes. His right hand clutched a ticket folder.

  My heart felt buoyant, lifting inside my chest. My subconscious, yearning for that simpler world I’d lived in as a child. Dad’s here. It’s all right now.

  Not this time.

  Fewer than ten paces behind my father were the two beefy thugs who’d been with him at Potsdam. They formed a triangle with my father as the apex, moving in stately formation. The goon farthest from me was chewing gum steadily, in rhythm with the slow pace. Twenty steps behind him was Bert, hobbling along as though he needed the cane tapping the floor in front of him. The thug nearest to us had a port wine stain discoloring his lower jaw and neck. It darkened further as he registered van Hoof’s sudden approach. He missed Bert, moving up swiftly on his right. Before Port-Wine could react, he was pinned between the two Belgians, his limbs paralyzed by the stun charge from Bert’s walking sti
ck.

  Chewing-Gum threw himself against Bert, slamming him down. Bert’s special-purpose cane rattled against the floor, rolled out of reach. A heavy boot smashed into Bert’s shoulder. He screamed.

  The guard at the security checkpoint turned to look.

  Van Hoof tossed Port-Wine aside and caught Chewing-Gum under the chin with a two-handed uppercut. He fell across Port-Wine, but van Hoof hadn’t knocked the second goon unconscious. Chewing-Gum’s right hand slid under his jacket and his lips moved, but whatever he said was lost in van Hoof’s shout. “A gun! This man has a gun!”

  The security guard drew his weapon. He started toward them. My father was blocking his way. Without a sideways glance, he straight-armed my father and shouted something in German at the four men in front of him.

  My father stumbled.

  I grabbed for him, taking his weight to keep him from falling. “Dad—”

  “Casey,” he said, and his face eased into a grin. “Casey, girl.” Then his forehead creased. “Give me a hand with the bag?”

  We both looked down. The contents must have weighed at least five pounds, pulling the cutout handles of the plastic bag so tightly against my father’s hand they looked like a single white strip. Through the taut openings I saw silver-foil paper covering a rectangular box bedecked with a paper flower made from the same gift-wrap. Not likely anyone in Berlin had taken my father shopping. Krüger had given him this present, I was sure of it. I reached for the package. “Give it to me,” I said.

  “Can manage now,” he said, his tone a mixture of affront and slyness. “I got it.” But his fingers uncurled. The white strip slid down from his palm to the first joint of his fingers. It rested there. The bottom of the bag was a foot above the floor.

  I reached for the bag.

  My father stepped back. “I got it.”

  I watched the white line slide toward the next joint. Five pounds falling from a height of one foot. Enough impact to set off certain detonators.