by Tom Gabbay
“Put the money away,” Chase said quietly. Johnson tried to hand Melik a fistful of bills, but Chase blocked him. “He’s not getting any goddamned money,” he said, then turned to Melik. “Get the fuck outta here, you piece of shit.”
I was trying to hold back the flow of blood with my palm, waiting for my moment.
“Give him the money and let’s get the hell out of here,” Johnson said firmly.
“He fucking cut me off!” Chase hissed. “You’re not getting any handouts, Ahab, so fuck off home and take a bath. It’ll be a new experience.”
Melik looked Chase in the eye and smiled easily. “I don’t take money….”
“Then get lost,” Chase said. “Move your fucking car.”
“I take him to doctor,” Melik said, nodding toward me.
Chase couldn’t believe his ears. He started to get out of the car, but stopped abruptly when he found the barrel of Melik’s vintage Luger pressed against his temple.
“You stay in car and put hands where I see,” Melik ordered. Chase reluctantly grabbed the steering wheel. “You also.” Melik looked to Johnson, who raised his arms.
“Hey, no problem, friend,” Johnson said agreeably. “We don’t want no trouble. Look, why don’t you just take the money? How much you figure for the damages?”
Melik ignored him, told me to get out. I pushed the door open and stepped onto the street. My legs were a little shaky, but I managed to step away and close the door without falling over. Feeling a lot better outside the car, I wiped the blood out of my right eye and walked around to the driver’s side, where Melik still had his piece against Chase’s temple.
“Keys,” Melik demanded. Chase handed them over and the Turk tossed them into some long grass by the side of the road.
“Do you know this clown, Teller?” Chase said.
“I’d be careful what you say about a guy who’s holding a bullet six inches from your brain,” I answered. “He might think you don’t like him.” Then, to Melik: “He’s got a gun under his jacket.”
“Give it,” Melik instructed.
“You’re making a big fucking mistake,” Chase said as he eased the Colt out of its holster.
“Don’t you make mistake.” Melik pushed his gun harder against Chase’s forehead. “Because I don’t mind kill you.” He confiscated the weapon, held it out for me.
“Take,” he said, and I grabbed it between my cuffed hands. I was surprised at how light it was, considering its size. The .44 Magnum Anaconda was built for one purpose—to inflict maximum damage on human flesh. The weapon of choice for psychokillers like Chase. I opened the back door and took aim at Johnson.
“Yours, too, cowboy,” I said. “Slide it over.”
Johnson reached under his jacket, placed his more conventional Beretta nine-millimeter automatic on the seat and pushed it over to me. I leaned into the car to pick it up and almost blacked out.
“You know this is it for you, Teller,” Johnson said matter-of-factly. “You’re dog meat now.”
“I’ll take the key for the cuffs, too,” I said, dropping Johnson’s pistol into my pocket while concentrating hard on staying upright. Johnson dug into his front pocket and came up with a small metal key. He held it up between his index and middle finger, studied it for a second, then placed it in his mouth and swallowed hard. It could’ve been under his tongue, but a search-and-rescue at that point would’ve been ill-advised, certainly not desirable.
“Oops,” he said with a big “screw you” Texas grin. I suddenly lost any warm feelings I’d felt for him and unloaded a round into the window next to his face. The god-damned thing went off like a cannon and Johnson’s smirk disappeared right away. He kept his cool under fire, though, calmly looking over at the six-inch hole in the window, then back at me.
“Let’s see the molars,” I said. He didn’t believe me so I put another one into the seat by his leg and he opened wide. Sure enough, the crazy bastard had swallowed it.
“That’s gonna hurt on the way out,” I said.
“Anything for my country,” he responded with a smile.
“Excuse me if I don’t salute.”
The shooting had spooked Melik. “Leave him!” he said nervously, probably thinking I was about to blow Johnson away. “Go to taxi!”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I responded. “I’ll stay here while you—”
“Go to taxi!” he insisted. “I come!”
I didn’t like it, but it was time to go, not argue. I backped-aled my way to the cab, keeping an eye and the six-shooter trained on Chase. The right side of the taxi was caved in, crushed by the Chrysler, so I opened the driver’s-side door, propped myself up against it.
“Okay, let’s go,” I called out. “I’ve got you covered!”
Then Melik made his mistake—he looked over his shoulder at me without stepping away first. It was all Chase needed. He got hold of Melik’s wrist and yanked him into the car. Johnson leapt forward and grabbed hold, twisted his forearm around, snapping the elbow at the joint and disarming him. Melik screamed, but Chase got him in a headlock through the window and I had no clear shot. It was over before I had a chance—Melik stopped struggling, twitched a couple of times, then went limp. Chase let him go and the poor bastard dropped to the ground, faceup, a four-inch blade buried in his trachea.
Chase and Johnson exploded out of the car. I fired off three rounds, missing everything but making a lot of noise. The boys hit the dirt long enough for me to dive into the taxi, praying to any God who’d listen to please, please let the keys be in the ignition. Somebody got the message and I fired up the engine, found first gear, and floored it.
I looked in the rearview mirror, saw Johnson down on one knee, in military posture, emptying the Luger in my direction. One of the slugs came through the back window and lodged in the dashboard, but I didn’t see it until later, after I’d stopped.
I drove for about ten minutes, long enough to get out of the area, then pulled into a parking garage and headed down to the basement, where I tucked the taxi into a corner space. I sat in the dark for a few minutes, trying to get my bearings and assess my physical condition. It felt like a nasty gash on my forehead, at the hairline above my right eye. I turned on the overhead light and inspected the wound in the mirror, dabbing it with an oily rag that was in the glove compartment. It wasn’t deep and the flow of blood seemed to be abating. I’d live.
I felt bad about Melik. I hardly knew the guy, but if I’d taken control of the situation Chase wouldn’t have been able to execute him like that. It was sickening and unnecessary. A few years earlier we would’ve worked him over for whatever information we could get out of him, stripped him to his underwear, and dumped him by the side of the road, bruised and battered, but still breathing. The times they were a-changing.
Clearly, Melik wasn’t your run-of-the-mill cabbie who I just happened to flag down, but I couldn’t figure out where he’d come from. My head just wasn’t in gear yet, because once the penny dropped, it was too obvious. There was only one way he could’ve picked me up.
So Horst was a plant. From the moment he’d asked me for a light at the beer hall, he’d been working me. I should’ve spotted it, and I guess I did have my suspicions, when he showed up at the hotel and when I saw that he’d rifled my pockets and found the Kovinski photo, but even then I’d given him the benefit of the doubt. I wondered if I’d lost my edge, but that kind of thinking wasn’t gonna get me anywhere. Horst could wait. Right now I had to figure out how to pick up the thread again.
I spotted a hack license in the glove compartment. The black-and-white photo showed a young student type with long, scruffy hair and the faint beginnings of a beard on his chin. Axel Kindermann, the ID said, eighteen years old. I guessed that Axel had recently left the keys in his taxi and came back to find it gone.
There was half a pack of Turkish nonfilters on the dash. Lifesavers. I looked around for a match, but there wasn’t a goddamned one in the car and the cig
arette lighter was missing. I guess Axel wasn’t a smoker. I dropped the pack into my shirt pocket for later and picked up Chase’s Colt, which had ended up on the floor. I was pretty sure I’d used five of its six bullets and I was right; there was still one in the chamber. I stuck the monster in my pocket and took the Beretta out, looked it over. It was compact, more my style, and had a full clip of fifteen ready to go. I made sure the safety was engaged and shoved it into my belt.
The cuffs were the first order of business. I grabbed the car keys, squeezed out through the tiny space I’d left between the taxi and the garage wall, and went around to the back. I was still a bit shaky and it was dark, so it took a minute to pop the trunk, but once I did, I found what I was looking for—a metal toolbox, big enough that it might hold something useful. I flipped the lid and dug through it, uncovering all sorts of screwdrivers, wrenches, ratchets, nuts, screws, and bolts, a hammer, a bicycle pump, a crowbar, and, for some reason, a map of Ireland. About the only thing that wasn’t in there was a hacksaw. My frustration eased a bit when I found a box of matches. I pocketed a couple of screwdrivers, which might come in handy at my next stop, then closed the trunk, leaned against the back fender, and fired up one of the Turkish delights. Heaven.
There seemed to be no way around it—I’d have to shoot the cuffs off. I pulled Johnson’s pistol out and looked it over, holding the cigarette between my lips, letting the smoke drift up my nose. It might work, but then again, the nine-millimeter slug could easily bounce off the reinforced metal and head straight into my face. No, if I was gonna do it, I might as well do it right. It would have to be the Anaconda.
I tucked the Beretta away, dropped my half-smoked cigarette onto the floor, and slid into the backseat. Removing the big gun from my pocket, I wrapped the oily, blood-soaked rag around it, then held it upside down in my right hand with my thumb against the trigger, fingers wrapped around the handle. There was only about two inches of chain between my manacles, which I put on the seat and pulled as tautly as I could, placing the six-inch barrel right up against it in order to fire point-blank. The idea was for the bullet to blast through the metal then continue down into the upholstery instead of back at me. That was the theory, anyway.
The barrel was just a little too long and hard to control from that angle. It kept slipping off the chain and pointing at various parts of my body, leading me to seriously reconsider the wisdom of my plan. Maybe I could get by with the cuffs, at least for a while, until I came up with an alternative. …
Fuck it. There was no alternative. I closed my eyes, said a quick prayer, and pulled the trigger. The pistol kicked hard and my hands flew apart as the slug blasted through the cuffs like they were ninety-nine cents a pair from Woolworth’s. There was a large, scorched hole where the bullet had blown through the seat. I congratulated myself on my ingenuity and stepped out of the car. A brand-new silver Porsche 911 caught my eye. Not the easiest thing on wheels to hot-wire, but worth the effort. Like the ad said, “Just for the Fun of It.”
I’d taken a couple of steps when I noticed the pungent aroma of gasoline in the air and a trickling sound coming from underneath the taxi. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the liquid was pouring through the .44-caliber bullet hole that I’d just put in the fuel tank. Just when I was thinking how lucky I was that it hadn’t exploded on impact, I noticed that the rapidly expanding pool of flammable fuel was no more than two inches from the still-smoking cigarette butt I’d tossed aside a few minutes earlier.
I got maybe halfway to the exit, running at full tilt, when the blast hit. It picked me up, carried me through the air, and slammed my rag-doll body against a concrete wall. I bounced hard onto the ground, struggled to my feet, and, holding my bruised rib cage, stumbled through the smoke to the doorway. I managed to pull the heavy steel door open and start up the stairwell just as the building’s foundation was rocked by a series of explosions, one on top of the other, as car after car on the basement floor took its turn to go BOOM!
SIXTEEN
I picked up an old Alfa Spider a couple of blocks from the garage. Very nice, jet-black with burgundy leather inside. I could’ve had the less conspicuous white Ford sedan parked across the street, but I went for style over substance.
With no idea about my location, I stopped at the first newsstand I came across and bought a map of Berlin. The proprietor, a hulk of a guy who must’ve been built into the kiosk, gave me a funny look and I realized I’d better get rid of my blood-soaked shirt if I wanted to avoid attention. I paid for the map, along with a copy of Berliner Morgenpost, which had Kennedy’s picture plastered all over the front page, and headed back to the car.
My left side was pretty sore and I wondered if I’d cracked a rib in the explosion. I gave it a poke, decided it didn’t hurt enough to be broken, then tried rotating my arm a couple of times to loosen things up. I thought better of it when a sharp pain shot through my diaphragm and up my arm to my shoulder. Better to leave well enough alone.
Opening the driver’s-side door and gingerly removing my jacket, I took the shirt off, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it behind the seat. The T-shirt was relatively free of blood, so I slipped the jacket on over it. It was a bit Miami Beach, but it would do. I sat behind the wheel and looked the paper over. Kennedy’s Berlin itinerary was printed in a box in the lower right-hand corner. I spent a moment on it, trying to commit it to memory, then turned to the headline, which translated as KENNEDY CONQUERS COLOGNE! The lead article went something like this:
Bonn, 25 June — Though the weather was fine this morning, the day got off to a chilly start for President Kennedy as he met with Chancellor Adenauer and other officials in the capital city. But then came the 35-mile drive to Cologne. More than one million Rhinelanders lined the American President’s route, chanting and applauding wildly as he passed. In Cologne itself, Mr. Kennedy drew a crowd of at least 350,000 people, who showed their approval with a big roar when he concluded his speech with the words “Kolle Alaaf!” (“Hooray for Cologne!”)
Not exactly in-depth political analysis, but interesting nonetheless. The West German government might not have succumbed to JFK’s charms, but its people seemed to have fallen under his spell. And the enthusiastic reception was just what the president needed to help him with his European problem.
The European problem was a “mutual defense pact” the German government had signed with France. On the surface, it was an historic achievement, two bitter enemies coming together after a century of catastrophic warfare. In reality—at least in Washington’s view—it was dangerous stuff and Kennedy’s primary mission in Europe was to scuttle it. Which accounted for his chilly reception in Bonn.
De Gaulle was the troublemaker, as usual. The French president didn’t hide his contempt for America’s influence on the Continent, and he missed no opportunity to undermine it. With this treaty, de Gaulle was tacitly encouraging the Germans to develop their own nuclear deterrent. He didn’t actually want them to have the bomb; he just wanted to put Kennedy in a position where he’d have to veto it, believing that the German people would resent him for interfering. But it didn’t look like resentment on the streets—and you could bet that Monsieur de Gaulle wouldn’t be getting the Elvis treatment if he turned up in Cologne.
Kennedy had seen in Cuba just how easily the unthinkable could happen, and he knew that even the suggestion of missiles in West Germany would make that near catastrophe look like a walk in the park. After coming so close, he wanted the world to take a step back from the brink, not dive over it. Just two weeks earlier, he’d announced high-level talks in Moscow, saying it was time to negotiate arms control with the Soviets.
And that brought me back to the Black Hand—the ring of military officers and spies who, a half century earlier, had conspired to gun down the archduke as he rode in his open car through the streets of Sarajevo. He had tried for peace, too, and with his death the men of that secret society got the war they wanted. I shuddered to think about history repeatin
g itself in Berlin. Kennedy would arrive in less than twenty-four hours and there were men waiting for him who believed that negotiation with the enemy was nothing short of treason. But if these men got their war, it wouldn’t be fathers strapping on their rifles, kissing their wives and children good-bye, and marching off to battle, as my father had done. Not this time. This time the war would come to us. It would come as we slept and it wouldn’t discriminate. We would all pay the price—men, women, and children.
I tossed the paper aside, got a fix on where I was and where I was going, put the car in gear, and pulled away.
I parked a block away from Kovinski’s building. There wasn’t much chance of finding him at home—the boys would have him stashed away somewhere—but I hoped I could pick up some sort of lead in his apartment. I had no idea what I was looking for. A scrap of paper, an address, anything to get me back on track. It occurred to me that he might have a wife or girlfriend hanging around, but having met the guy, it seemed unlikely. It’d be easier if he didn’t, but it wouldn’t stop me if he did.
I rang the bell a few times until I was satisfied that no one was going to answer, then started down the line of buzzers. I was about halfway through them when an old woman’s soft voice came over the intercom.
“Wer ist da?” she said sweetly.
Figuring he wouldn’t be on speaking terms with his neighbors, I told her, in German, that I was Herr Kovinski from 5C and I’d forgotten my key, could she be so kind as to let me in? She buzzed the door open without another word. Nice lady, I thought as I stepped into the lobby. It was dark and cool inside, the stark interior consisting of nothing more than painted cinder-block walls and a bare concrete floor.
There was a small elevator on one side, but I took the stairs. If the place was being watched, which was certainly possible, I’d have been spotted and would be a sitting duck in the lift. At least I’d have a fighting chance out in the open. I pulled the Beretta, switched the safety off, and stuck it back in my belt, where I could easily get to it. Carefully opening the door onto the fifth floor, I stepped into a long, empty hallway that smelled of somebody’s Wiener schnitzel, making me feel a bit queasy.