Extraordinary Powers

by Joseph Finder

  “The defense minister,” Vogel said.

  “Will be easily done,” Stoessel replied. “He wants the same thing. Once the German army is restored to its proper glory…”

  Another muffled remark, and then Stoessel went on. “Easily! Easily! Russia is no longer a threat! Russia is nothing. France … you are old enough to remember the Second World War, Willi. The French will curse and complain, bluster about a Maginot line, but they will capitulate without a struggle.”

  Vogel seemed to object again, for Stoessel replied querulously, “Because it is in their best economic interests, why else? The rest of Europe will roll over, and Russia will have no choice but to roll over as well.”

  Vogel said something about Washington and a “secret witness.”

  “He will be found,” Stoessel said. “The leak will be found and plugged. He assures us it will be contained.”

  Vogel said something about “before then,” and Stoessel said, “Yes, precisely. In three days it will happen … Yes. No, the man will be assassinated. It will not fail. It is orchestrated. He will die. It is not to worry.”

  There was a noise, a thump, which I realized was the door to the steam bath being opened.

  Then, very distinctly, Stoessel said: “Ah, you are here.”

  “Welcome,” Vogel said. “I trust your flight into Stuttgart was uneventful.”

  Another thump; the door was closed.

  “… wanted to tell you,” Stoessel’s voice came again, “how grateful we are. All of us.”

  “Thank you,” said Vogel.

  “Our heartfelt congratulations to you,” Stoessel said.

  The newcomer spoke to them in fluent German, but with a foreign accent, probably American. The voice was a resonant baritone, and somehow familiar. The voice of someone I’d heard on television? On the radio?

  “The witness is scheduled to appear before the Senate committee on intelligence,” the newcomer said.

  “Who is it?” Stoessel demanded.

  “We do not yet have a name. Be patient. We have obtained access to the committee’s computer banks. This is how we can be sure that this secret witness will be testifying on the subject of the Wise Men.”

  “And on us?” Vogel said. “Does he know about Germany?”

  “Impossible to know,” the American said. “Whether he—or she—does, or doesn’t, our link to you is a simple one to make.”

  “Then he must be eliminated,” Stoessel said.

  “But without knowing the witness’s identity,” the American said, “it is impossible to know who to eliminate. Only when the individual appears—”

  “Only at that moment—?” Vogel interrupted.

  “At that moment,” the American said, “it will be done. This I can assure you.”

  “But they will take measures to protect the witness,” Stoessel said.

  “There are no protective measures adequate,” the American went on. “Do not be concerned. I am not. But the pressing concern now is one of coordination. If the hemispheres are apportioned—if we have the Americas, and you have Europe—”

  “Yes,” Stoessel interrupted impatiently, “you are speaking of the coordination between the two world governing centers, but that is easily accomplished.”

  It was time to move.

  As quietly as possible I turned around, awkward in this cramped space, and crept back to the door. I listened for any footsteps, and when I was sure no one was passing by, I quickly opened it and returned to the hallway, which now seemed grotesquely bright. There were dark mud stains on the knees of my white cotton pants.

  I ran around to the entrance to the steam room, found the tray of bottled water, and yanked open the door. A large cloud of opaque steam swirled before me as I stepped into the chamber. Stoessel seemed to have shifted somewhat; he had moved to the right. The man I now identified as Vogel had not moved from the spot on the bench he was on earlier. The last arrival sat farther down the bench from Vogel, to the chancellor-elect’s right, out of my range of sight.

  “Hey,” the American said, still in German. “No one comes in here, you understand me?” The voice was increasingly, maddeningly familiar.

  Stoessel excoriated me in German: “Enough with the refreshments! Leave us alone! I gave instructions to be left alone!”

  I stood there, not moving, letting my eyes adjust to the opaque steam. The American seemed to be a middle-aged man, I couldn’t tell for sure, and he was in better physical condition than the two Germans. Then a gust of air from somewhere nearby wafted the sulfurous clouds, an eddy parting a clear patch in the steam. The face of the American, swirling before me, was instantly recognizable, and for a moment I could not move.

  The new Director of CIA. My friend, Alex Truslow.

  PART

  VI

  LAC TREMBLANT

  Los Angeles Times

  * * *

  Gemany to Rearm, Acquire Nuclear Weapons Move Supported by Washington, Western Leaders

  * * *

  BY CAROLYN HOWE

  TIMES STAFF WRITER

  Relieved that Germany has resolutely turned away from neo-Nazism, the United States and a majority of governments around the world have lent their support to new Germany Chancellor Wilhelm Vogel’s bid to “restore Germany’s national pride”.…

  FIFTY-THREE

  “Wer ist denn das?” Vogel called out. Who is this? “Wo ist der Leibwächter?” Where is the bodyguard?

  Truslow’s silver hair, I now saw, was still neatly combed; his face was red from the scalding heat, or from anger, but probably from both.

  I came nearer to him.

  And to me, in a voice soft and caring and gentle, he said: “Please, Ben, stop right there. For your own sake. Don’t worry. I’ve just told them you are a friend, that you must not be harmed. Nothing will be done to you. You will not be hurt.”

  He must be killed, I heard. He must be killed at once.

  “We’ve been looking all over for you,” Truslow continued sweetly.

  Ellison must be eliminated, he thought.

  “I must say,” he went on soothingly, “this is the last place in the world I expected to find you. But you’re safe now, and—”

  I hurled the tray at Truslow, scattering glass mineral water bottles everywhere. One hit Vogel in the stomach; the others shattered loudly on the tiled floor.

  Truslow commanded in German: “Halten Sie diesen Mann auf. Er darf hier nicht lebend herauskommen!”

  “Stop this man!” he had shouted. “He must not be allowed to leave here alive!”

  I leapt through the door and ran with all my might, with as much speed as I could muster, toward the nearest exit, into the Romerplatz, Truslow’s words echoing in my head. And I knew that for the last time, Alexander Truslow had lied to me.

  * * *

  Molly had the Mercedes idling for me at the Friedrichsbad’s side entrance. She threw the car into gear, sped to the city’s outskirts, and found the autobahn A8. Echterdingen International Airport was only sixty miles or so east, a few miles south of Stuttgart.

  For a long time, I didn’t speak.

  Finally, I told her what I had seen. She reacted just as I had, with shock, horror, and then white-hot anger.

  We both knew now why it was that Truslow had recruited me, why it was that Rossi had deceived me into becoming an Oracle Project subject, why they were so elated to discover that the experiment had worked on me.

  A great deal now made sense.

  Aloud, as we barreled down the autobahn in Molly’s skilled hands, I pieced it together. “Your father didn’t commit any crime,” I told her. “He wanted to do whatever he could to save Russia. So he agreed to help Vladimir Orlov empty out the Soviet treasury of its gold reserves, help move it abroad, hide it. He had it moved to Zurich, where some of it was put into storage in a vault, and some of it was converted into liquid assets.”

  “But where did it go from there?”

  “It fell under the control of the Wise M
en.”

  “Alex Truslow, you mean.”

  “Right. By asking me to help track down this missing fortune—which he told me had been diverted by your father—he was actually using me, using my talent, to locate the half of the gold he couldn’t get access to. Because your father had locked it away in the Bank of Zurich.”

  “But who’s the co-owner of the account?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Truslow must have suspected that Orlov had stolen the gold. That’s why he employed me to find Orlov, which the CIA hadn’t been able to do.”

  “And once you found him—?”

  “Once I found him, I could read his thoughts, presumably. And learn where he had put the gold.”

  “But Dad was co-owner of the account. So no matter what, Truslow would need my signature!”

  “For some reason, Truslow must have wanted us to get to Zurich. What was it that the banker said—by accessing the account, its status was altered from dormant to active?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Molly hesitated, let an eighteen-wheeler pass us. “And what if the Oracle Project hadn’t been successful on you?”

  “Then he might not have found the gold. Or he might have. But in any case, it would have taken much, much longer.”

  “So you’re telling me that Truslow used the five billion he did have access to as—as a fulcrum, to cause the German stock market crash?”

  “It fits, Molly. I can’t be certain, but it fits. If Orlov’s information is right, and the Wise Men—read Truslow, and probably Toby, and probably others—”

  “Who now run CIA—”

  “—Yes. If the Wise Men really used Agency intelligence to gather inside information on foreign markets, and were able somehow to engineer the U.S. stock market crisis of 1987, it must have been these same people who pulled off the far bigger German one.”

  “But how?”

  “You channel a paltry few billion dollars—deutsche marks—secretly and suddenly into the German stock market. Used swiftly and suddenly, by experts with access to computer trading accounts, it can be used to acquire vast sums of money on credit in order to destabilize an already weak market. To seize control of much larger assets. To buy and sell on margin, buy and sell, using computerized program trading, at a speed possible only in this age of computers.”

  “But for what?”

  “For what?” I echoed. “Look at what’s happened. Vogel and Stoessel are about to control Germany. Truslow and the Wise Men now control CIA…”

  “And?”

  “And—I don’t know.”

  “But who’s going to be killed?”

  I didn’t have the answer to that exactly, but I knew that there was a leak—someone who knew about this conspiracy between Truslow’s people and Stoessel’s, between Germany and America. And this person, whoever it was, was about to testify before the Senate Select Subcommittee on Intelligence hearings on corruption in CIA. “Corruption,” that is, masterminded by the new Director of Central Intelligence, Alexander Truslow.

  A secret witness was about to blow the whole thing in two days. If he (or she) was not killed first.

  * * *

  At Echterdingen Airport I tracked down a private airline and a pilot who was about to go home for the evening. I offered him double what he normally got for flying to Paris, and he turned around, donned his flight jacket, and guided us to his small plane. He radioed ahead for clearance to land, received it, and then we took off.

  * * *

  At something after two in the morning we arrived at Charles de Gaulle, went through the briefest of customs formalities, and got a cab into Paris. We got off at the Duc de Saint-Simon, on the rue Saint-Simon in the seventh arrondissement, woke the night clerk who dozed at the concierge desk, and wheedled a spare room. She was not happy about being disturbed. Molly halfheartedly insisted upon accompanying me on my nocturnal mission, but she was feeling queasy from the pregnancy and was easily dissuaded.

  Paris, to me, wasn’t just one of the world’s great cities; it was, or at least it had become, a stage set for my recurrent nightmares. Paris wasn’t the Île and the Left Bank and the rue Royale. It was the rue Jacob, that dark, narrow, echoing street where Laura and my future child were murdered and James Tobias Thompson III was paralyzed for life in a sequence that repeated and repeated itself, became more and more ritualized and grotesque and artificial. Paris had become a synonym for tragedy.

  Yet I had no choice but to return.

  Now I found myself in a depressing second-floor-walk-up photographer’s studio on a seedy strip along the rue de Sèze. Below were forbidding little black-painted storefronts marked with signs that read SEX SHOP and VIDEO and SEXODROME and LINGERIE LATEX CUIR and the flashing green crosses of the Grande Pharmacie de la Place.

  What appeared to have been once a tiny one-bedroom flat had been converted haphazardly over the years into a dismal little combination pornographic photographer’s studio and porno-video rental outfit. I sat on a grimy molded plastic chair, waiting for Jean to finish his work. Jean—I never knew his last name and didn’t care to know it—did a healthy sideline business producing excellent false documents, passports, and licenses, largely for freelance operatives and small-time crooks. I had had occasion to do business with him a few times before, during my Paris assignment, and found him to be reliable and a good craftsman.

  Could I trust him? Well, nothing in this life is certain, I suppose. But Jean had all the motivation in the world to be trustworthy. His livelihood depended upon his reputation for discretion, which a single act of betrayal would tarnish forever.

  I had spent forty-five minutes glancing dully through a dog-eared movie magazine, having grown bored with inspecting the empty video boxes on display on his counter. There were more fetishes and variations in the porno biz than I had ever imagined (“Spanking” and “Hard” and “Trisex” and some deviations I’d never heard of), and all of them were available on video now.

  It was after midnight. The photographer had locked the front door and drawn the shade to guard against what little street traffic might come by at that time of night. From the inner room I heard the whir of a hot-air photographic dryer.

  At last Jean appeared from the darkroom. He was a small, wizened man in premature middle age, bald and worried-looking, wearing small round wire-rim glasses. He smelled strongly of potassium permanganate solution, which he’d used to artificially age the documents.

  “Voilà,” he said, placing the papers on the counter with a flourish. He smiled with some pride. The job had not been terribly difficult: he had been able to work with the entire set of CIA-prepared documents that Molly and I had been given, in effect recycling them, reusing our photographs, and altering numbers where necessary. He had provided one set of Canadian passports and two sets of American ones for us. Molly and I were now fully documented as either American or Canadian citizens.

  I inspected all four sets carefully. He did meticulous work. He also charged outrageously. But I was in no position to negotiate.

  I nodded, paid him his small ransom, and walked down to the street. There was the whine of mopeds, the acrid stench of diesel fumes. Even at this time of night people roamed the streets of Pigalle, searching for quick gratification. A scraggly gang walked by, who looked to be of college age, dressed in the latest French take on the sixties—leather jackets in black or brown or American-type varsity letter jackets (the effect marred by odd emblazoned slogans like “American Football,” which only made them seem all the more counterfeit); long hair, rolled-up jeans, and orthopedic-looking oxford shoes of the sort you might see nuns wearing. Someone roared by on an enormous motorcycle, a Honda Africa Twin 750.

  * * *

  In the next few minutes I placed several phone calls to old contacts from my CIA days. None of them was connected in any official way to governmental intelligence services; each worked mainly on the wrong side of the law (a difficult distinction in t
he espionage trade): from a souvlaki shop owner who laundered money for others (at a fee, naturally) to an armorer who custom-altered weapons for assassins and hit men. I succeeded in waking each one of them up with the exception of one night owl who seemed to be out at some dance club with a bimbo and a cellular phone. Finally, through an old friend who had been useful as an expediter years before, I located what my French operative friends sometimes call an ingénieur, an “engineer,” or a fellow skilled at clever circumventions of the international telephone systems. Within the hour I was at the ingénieur’s apartment, in a decrepit 1960s-vintage high-rise in the twentieth arrondissement, off the Avenue de la République. He eyed me through the peephole for a few seconds, and then opened the door. His apartment, scantily furnished with cheap furniture, smelled of stale beer and sweat. He was small and pudgy, wearing a pair of dirty, paint-spattered jeans and a stained white Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt under which bulged an enormous potbelly. Obviously he had been sleeping, like most of the rest of Paris; his hair was disheveled and his eyes were half shut. Without so much as a grunt of social pleasantry, he thrust his thumb toward a smudged white telephone on a coffee table topped with fake-wood-grain Formica that was chipped around the edges. Next to the coffee table was a hideous mustard-yellow sofa whose stuffing was coming out in several places. The phone was precariously balanced atop a set of Paris phone directories.

  The ingénieur didn’t know my name and naturally didn’t ask. He had been told only that I was an homme d’affaires, but then, probably all his clients were hommes d’affaires. He was making a very quick five hundred francs for allowing me to use an untraceable phone.

  Actually, the call I was about to place was traceable, but the trace would come to a grinding halt somewhere in Amsterdam. From there, though, the link was routed through a series of pass-throughs to Paris, but no electronic tracing equipment yet invented could track it that far.

  The ingénieur took my money, grunted porcinely, and shuffled off to another room. Had I had more time, I would have preferred a more secure arrangement than this one, but it would have to do.