by Rachel Lee
“Sie sind fertig, Herr Bundeskanzler,” Johannes Grauberg said.
Grauberg was Vögel’s Kanzleramtsminister—chief of staff—and one of his oldest friends. A skilled lawyer and politician, Grauberg chose his words carefully. As always, they were rich with subtle meanings. In the colloquial, he had said You are exhausted. But the literal meanings—You are spent, or You are finished—might well be just as accurate.
“Ja, Johannes. That I am.” Vögel leaned down to lock his desk, another long-standing habit, even though his was perhaps the most secure office in all of Germany, and walked toward the door. “Please, walk with me.”
Grauberg looked into his eyes for a moment, as if trying to read his thoughts, then nodded and took his coat from the rack.
The cabinet meeting had been long and difficult. When he had campaigned, Vögel was convinced he could solve at least some of the problems that nagged at Germany. Three years into his term, he was much less confident. Perhaps the German people would be better off with someone else at the helm. Or perhaps no one could fix the problems.
Nearly two decades had passed since der Wende, the change, the reunification of Germany. On 3 October 1990, the future had looked gloriously bright. An artificial separation pitting brother against brother over the harsh concrete of the Berlin Wall had come to an end. The last vestige of Germany’s punishment for Hitler’s evil was gone. Across this ancient land, hearts were filled with hope.
But full reunification proved to be a difficult task. The problems in the East were legion. Unemployment hovered at nearly twenty percent. The Eastern economy continued to grow slower than the West, increasing the gap between them. All in all, the West-to-East subsidies amounted to four percent of Germany’s gross domestic product, more than her annual rate of growth. Each year, she fell further behind.
If all that weren’t enough, there were Jules Soult, the horrors at the Paris mosque and the growing sense that the EU was spiraling out of control.
“Too much,” Vögel found himself repeating under his breath.
“You’re doing all that you can, Karl,” Grauberg said.
As was their custom, they switched to first names as they strolled along the spiral walkway inside the glass dome of the Reichstag. At nearly eleven o’clock at night, the dome was silent, lacking the usual bustle of government office workers and tourists.
The two GSG-9 security agents dropped back a few steps, giving Vögel and Grauberg some minimal measure of privacy. That in itself was a small comfort. Too rarely was he simply “Karl” now. With nearly every word he said going into the public record, too rarely could he simply speak as a man to a friend.
“Am I?” Vögel asked. “Are we really doing all we can for the East?”
“Yes,” Grauberg said. “Remember Bayern, my friend. After the war, they needed subsidies for forty years. Now it is one of our most productive states.”
“But can Germany afford that again, Johannes?”
“The German people will do what they must, Karl. They are a good people. And in the end, it is them upon whom we must rely. Never forget that there are two ways to build a ship. The first is to lay out detailed plans for everyone to follow.”
“And the second is to create in their hearts a dream of the sea,” Vögel said, smiling at the poetic hope embodied in the ancient German proverb.
As was so often the case, the old wisdom held true. A man could manage, or he could lead. Vögel had chosen to be a leader rather than a manager, campaigning on his vision, his dream of a prosperous Germany leading Europe into a new age of peace and prestige in the world. The German people—enough of them—had approved of his vision. He owed it to them to keep the vision bright. Yet now he was faced with a choice more vexing than any in the past sixty years.
“And what about Soult?” he asked.
What about Soult? That question had lain over the cabinet meeting like coal dust, blackening and fouling every other issue. The new President of the European Union had become the bane of Vögel’s every thought. Soult’s latest legislative proposals—purportedly offered to “pacify and protect” European Muslims—were nothing short of evil.
It could become a new Holocaust.
“Germany cannot participate in what Soult proposes,” Grauberg said. “We have worked too hard to cleanse the stain of Hitler. Now Soult proposes that all of Europe defile itself again. You are right, and you know you are right. And the German people will know you are right, Karl, when they learn the details. They will follow you.”
Grauberg broke step and faced the chancellor directly. He lowered his voice. “Karl, you cannot think it even remotely possible that the German people will stand aside while an ethnic group is forced to board trains to go to these so-called protection zones.”
Vögel’s sigh was pained, heavy. “There are those who would like nothing better.”
“But they are a minority. Most Germans remember the past and have learned from it. They will support you.”
The chancellor looked his friend in the eye. “Even if we must withdraw from the European Union in protest?”
“Yes. Even then.”
Vögel frowned deeply, resuming their walk down the ramp. “I have no desire to see the Union fail. Too many have worked too hard to build it.”
“Perhaps it is too soon for unity, Karl. The French and Dutch voted against the constitution. And there have been protests all along.”
“And you know why.” Vögel glanced at his friend. “Fear of the outsider. Fear of the immigration that Europe needs to maintain a viable work force. Our population is shrinking. If we are to remain economically viable, we must accept and welcome immigrants. Soult and people like him would ‘purify’ Europe, only to watch it stagnate and die. Yet I will be blamed for destroying the EU.”
“We will be a beacon,” Grauberg said firmly. “We must stand for what is right.”
Grauberg paused, and Vögel paused with him, looking out over the lights of Berlin. Even at night, the city bustled. Unlike what Vögel had seen in his many visits to the United States, most German cities slept at night, dark, quiet and peaceful. In his hometown of Freiburg, on a clear night, lovers who walked out into the darkness could look up at millions of stars. Not so in Berlin.
The sound was faint at first, musical and yet not, a single pitch riding on the air, barely at the threshold of hearing. Vögel raised an eyebrow for a moment and glanced around. The huge, open dome was empty save for Grauberg, the two security agents and Vögel himself.
Grauberg hesitated, cocking his head to one side. “What is that sound, Karl?”
Vögel shook his head, looking around inside the dome. “I don’t know.”
The whine had grown louder, almost the sound of a child blowing across the top of a bottle, but firmer. The two GSG-9 agents had also heard it and were edging closer to them.
“It sounds like air blowing across an open window,” Grauberg said, “but there are no open windows here.”
“None that we know of,” one of the GSG-9 agents said, lifting his wrist to his mouth. He spoke into a cufflink microphone. “Give me a security check on all windows and doors in the dome.”
“We need to get you out of here, Chancellor,” the other agent said.
Vögel was about to nod when he felt as if an electric shock jarred through his body. He gasped, trying to catch his breath, but it was as if the air had been sucked from the room. He tried to reach out for Grauberg, but his arm would not obey this most simple of commands.
As he began to sag to his knees, he saw snow falling around him. But as the snow landed on him and opened rivulets of blood, he realized it was not snow.
It was falling glass.
Rome, Italy
Renate Bächle did not want to hear the ringing of her cell phone. At that moment, she wanted nothing but the body of Antonio Lazio, a man she barely knew, but still a man. Her sex ached with need and pleasure, glowing with a warmth she had not felt in years, as Antonio thrust into her. He was
masterful, first plunging fast, then slowing, constantly varying the pace to keep her at the peak of desire, all the while sprinkling kisses over her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. Raw, animal lust drove her muscles in reply, her hips thrusting up to meet him, her inner muscles clenching tight every time he withdrew. The world was miles away, and there it should stay for this night. Because right now she felt like a woman at her most basic level.
But the phone was insistent, not only ringing but clattering across the nightstand, the buzzing vibration reverberating through the wood. As fully as her fluttery contractions had built, they evaporated even more fully, leaving her feeling more dissatisfied than when she had begun.
“Ja, Bächle,” she snapped as she brought the phone to her ear. “What is it?”
“Renate, it’s Lawton. You need to get in here now. Something has happened in Berlin. Chancellor Vögel has…he’s collapsed. And part of the Reichstag, too. His assistant and security detail were also injured.”
Office 119 had taken everything from her. She had lost her best friend. She had lost her parents. She could not even manage an orgasm. No, she told herself. That wasn’t true. Her parents and her friend had not been killed by Office 119 but by a shadowy banking cabal known as the Frankfurt Brotherhood. Office 119 had recruited her after the death of her friend, a death that had been reported as her own. The woman she had been—Gretchen Zeitgenbach, a skilled forensic accountant for the German Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA—was no more. She was now Renate Bächle. And Renate Bächle knew all too well that duty trumped everything else, including a sex life.
“Scheiße!” she swore, anger fading into resignation. She used one hand to push Antonio none too gently off her. “I’m on my way.”
“No,” Antonio said. “Non andare via.” No. Don’t go.
Renate tried to smile. She did not love Antonio. She had no room in her life for love. Moreover, she knew he did not love her. This was a liaison of convenience, nothing more. But neither did she wish to hurt him.
“I have no choice,” she said, touching a fingertip to his nose. While she didn’t feel deeply for him, she didn’t want to offend him. In the days ahead, she might want to seek him out again. “It is my job. I must go.”
“What an awful job that would tear you from my arms in this moment,” he said.
She could not disagree. Office 119 didn’t even allow her time to be a woman.
Berlin, Germany
Doctor Ulla Viermann tried to ignore the weight of the moment and focus on her patient. He was dying, and it was her task to prevent that. Nothing else—not even that he was the Chancellor of Germany—mattered in this moment.
But a part of her knew otherwise. Already the hallway was filled with security and government officials, and she knew the hospital lobby would be mobbed with reporters from all over the world. Her every action, her every thought, would be picked over in detail, not just today or this week but for years to come.
The patient’s seizures had begun while he was in transport to the hospital, and he had twice fallen into respiratory arrest. Ulla had pushed the oxygen rate to one hundred percent, and still she could not stabilize him. Worse, he did not look like a man in respiratory distress. He was not cyanotic—his fingertips and lips were not blue—and yet his body was acting as if he were suffocating.
Cyanotic.
“Draw venous blood,” Ulla said. “I need venous versus arterial oxygenation. Now.”
The nurse worked quickly, drawing a vial of bright red blood from the patient’s vein, and Ulla did not need to see the test results to confirm her diagnosis. Arterial blood was bright red because it carried oxygen. Venous blood, while not the blue shown on the charts in school biology classes, was visibly darker. The blood in the vial should be almost purple.
“You are sure you drew from a vein?” Ulla asked.
The nurse nodded. “Ja, Frau Doktor.”
“Cellular asphyxia,” Ulla said aloud.
The patient’s lungs were working fine, transferring oxygen into the red blood cells for transport throughout his body. But his tissues were not receiving the oxygen, and thus his venous blood was still rich with vital gas.
“Venous O2 is sixty em-em,” the nurse said, watching the blood oxygenation readouts. “Arterial O2 is sixty-five. Almost the same.”
Ulla knew there were only three culprits. She ruled out carbon monoxide; the Reichstag dome was far too large to be filled with it in sufficient concentration to cause these symptoms. She ran to the door and grabbed one of the GSG-9 agents who had come in with the patient. The man was still on duty, despite the rivulets of blood flowing from a multitude of cuts from falling glass.
“Did you smell rotten eggs before the chancellor collapsed?” she asked.
He gave her a quizzical look, pausing for a moment.
“I need to know,” she said, shaking him. “Did you smell rotten eggs?”
“Nein, Frau Doktor. Nein.”
“Danke,” Ulla said. That ruled out hydrogen sulfide, leaving only one possible culprit. She turned to a nurse. “Cyanide kit. Now.”
Time was critical. If this was indeed acute cyanide poisoning, her patient had only minutes to live. The nurse had the cyanide kit in hand, and Ulla gave the orders.
“Push three hundred milligrams sodium nitrite over five, then twelve-point-five grams sodium thiosulfate IV over ten.”
“Ja,” the nurse said.
“Keep O2 at one hundred percent. Tap a vein and give me constant venous O2 stats.”
“Ja.”
Ulla glanced up at the blood pressure monitor. While less deadly than cyanide, thiocyanate was still toxic and could cause the patient’s blood pressure to drop quickly.
“Hang blood and have it ready,” she said.
She shone a penlight into the patient’s pupils but found no response. The soles of his feet and palms of his hands were equally unresponsive to pressure. His central nervous system was shutting down. They were losing the battle. He was dying.
“Hydroxocobalamin now,” she said.
“Frau Doktor?” The nurse arched an eyebrow.
Although hydroxocobalamin had performed well in clinical trials, the government had not yet approved its use for treatment of cyanide cases. At this point, however, Ulla could not worry about such details. They had only minutes.
“You heard me,” she said. “Hydroxocobalamin, four grams IV. Now!”
“Blood pressure is still falling,” another nurse called out. “Sixty over forty. Pulse irregular.”
“He’s going into cardiac arrest,” Ulla said, ripping the patient’s shirt wider to expose his chest fully. “Prep the paddles. Charge two hundred.”
“Charging two hundred,” the nurse said. “Charged.”
“Clear!” Ulla yelled as she placed the paddles to his chest, one in the center and one below the armpit.
“Clear!” the nurses said in unison, confirming that they were not touching the patient.
Ulla pushed the buttons, and a two-hundred-joule current coursed through the patient’s chest. She looked up at the heart monitor. There was no change. “Charge three hundred.”
“Charged at three hundred.”
“Clear!”
She pushed the buttons again, and the patient almost rose off the table as the electricity seized his body. Still the heart monitor showed a flat line.
“Blood pressure fifty over thirty and falling,” a nurse called out. “We’re losing him fast.”
“Charge three hundred!” Ulla said, not yet willing to concede defeat.
“Charged at three hundred.”
“Clear!”
Again the nurses stood clear as she pressed the buttons. And again there was no response.
“Frau Doktor,” the nurse said, reaching for Ulla’s hands, shaking her head. “Exitus.”
He is gone.
Only then did Ulla taste the blood in her mouth. She had bitten her lip hard enough to break the skin. Already the bottom of her mask felt da
mp. She looked around the room, taking a silent poll of each face. There was neither question nor dissent.
“Time of death: 23:57 hours.”
Three minutes before midnight.
3
Rome, Italy
R enate walked into Office 119, hardly glancing around as she made her way to her desk.
“Where the hell were you?” Jefe demanded.
Like Lawton, Jefe had once served in the FBI. Now he was simply El Jefe, the Chief. In their previous lives, Lawton Caine, then known as Tom Lawton, had known him as John Ortega. But now, neither Lawton Caine nor Jefe spoke of that. For, like Tom Lawton, John Ortega was officially dead.
“I was having sex with a man I met at a bar,” Renate snapped. “Your timing is abysmal.”
Jefe’s jaw dropped. Even Lawton seemed embarrassed by her blunt reply. Margarite’s reaction, however, was purely European. “My sympathies. Maybe you can finish your workout later.”
“Workout?” Jefe repeated, eyes pinched. “What…?”
Renate dropped her pager on her desk, letting it bounce as she sat. “You Americans sell cars by leaning half-naked women across them, yet you get all upset when women talk about sex as a normal part of life. I will never understand you.”
“Well, don’t blame us for the timing,” Lawton said, something lurking in his tone that annoyed her even more. “We didn’t kill Chancellor Vögel.”
“He’s dead?” Renate asked, forcing her anger into the background. There was no room for the personal here, not Lawton’s ill-concealed jealousy, not her own frustration and sense that she was losing important parts of herself. Here there could be only business. She had violated the code by announcing where she had been. “You said something about the dome collapsing. What happened?”
“We don’t know yet. The news is still spotty, beyond reports that part of the Reichstag dome has collapsed. The hospital and the government are sitting on the story until they know more. But our source says Vögel is dead. What’s more, it was probably murder. Cyanide poisoning.”
“Cyanide! But how? Why would cyanide make the Reichstag dome collapse?”