The Jericho Pact

by Rachel Lee

  “Everyone grows anxious,” Stoll said. “Worse, the rioting in the streets has lessened since Nice, and Soult is citing that as evidence that he is right. And many in Europe believe him.”

  “What can we do?” Lev asked.

  Zekariah thought for a moment. “Tiananmen Square.”

  Lev nodded, excitement creeping into his features. “Yes, I agree. We will stand together to block the tanks. But where?”

  Veltroni drew a deep breath, watching these men come to a conclusion that might lead to martyrdom. Part of him wished to cry out that their lives could not stop the will of an army. Yet he knew, in the deepest part of his heart, that change begins with a single man willing to take the risk.

  “Europabrücke,” Stoll said at once. Not only was it a bridge between Strasbourg and Kehl, Germany, but it was a famous one. In the 1990s, the European cultural council, at the request of Kehl and Strasbourg, had undertaken a project to transform the bridge over the Rhine from a mere passage to an icon of unity. Along the bridge in illuminated panels were the words of forty famous European writers, all in their native tongues, speaking of unity and hope. Because of the brightly lit panels, many now referred to it as the Rainbow Bridge.

  The site could not be more apropos.

  “We will make our stand on the bridge,” Stoll said.

  Veltroni had visited Europabrücke, had stood in wonder as he considered the bright future it symbolized, a bridge of understanding, a symbol of peace.

  Yet now it might be violated, painted in blood. “If you do this,” he said finally, his heart and voice heavy, “you will not be alone.”

  Stoll looked at him, caught his meaning, and nodded. “The Stewards will help?”

  “As many as I can find who are willing. And I will try to get back from Rome to stand with you.”

  Silence filled the room once again as each man searched his heart for the strength and faith to take this dangerous stand.

  “We cannot count on them not wanting to hurt us,” Zekariah said. “We must be clear that we may die on that bridge. If we are not willing to do that, then we must not go.”

  “I’m willing,” said Stoll firmly, holding out his hand. Immediately three others clasped it.

  It was settled.

  For once in his life, Veltroni, the ultimate Jesuit, found no arguments against this action. For in his heart of hearts he knew: it was what Jesus would have them do.

  Then the imam gave them a precious gift of laughter. Wryly he said, “Unfortunately, I do not believe I will be rewarded with seventy-two virgins.”

  27

  Berlin, Germany

  T he explosion of a warehouse in the Muslim protection zone of Rome barely made a ripple on the tense surface of European news in the wake of Soult’s speech. Even if it had been, as one reporter suggested, an act of terrorism, it appeared insignificant against the backdrop of the specter of war in Europe.

  Most of the EU nations had fallen silent, their spokespersons refusing to comment until they had a chance to review the situation in depth.

  Renate watched the television in Frau Doktor Viermann’s small parlor, seated on a battered sofa next to the doctor. They sipped glasses of a perennial German favorite: Apfelsaftschorle, a combination of apple juice and carbonated water. The drink could be purchased ready-made, but many Germans still preferred to mix their own in varying proportions. Ulla clearly favored a larger ratio of carbonated water to apple juice. The drink bit the tongue.

  “Everyone is afraid to speak,” Ulla Viermann said. “They are afraid a single wrong word could trigger the war.”

  “Ja,” Renate agreed. But she hardly cared about that right now. The warehouse explosion story, as small as it was, had not escaped her attention. To an outsider she might appear riveted to the developments in Europe at large. Inwardly, she could think of nothing but the attack on Office 119. For although the stories were sketchy, they mentioned the location of the warehouse.

  She wanted to be thinking coolly and logically about what she and Lawton should do next, but instead she was back in the Schwarzwald, driving home from Baden-Baden, where her father worked in a casino, with Karen, her best and only lifelong friend, hiding in the backseat. Despite the twisting mountain roads, Renate was relaxed. The car was handling well, and she and Karen were laughing, reminiscing about trouble they had gotten into as students.

  It had felt good to laugh, for Karen was not only her friend but also a reporter for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or FAZ, Germany’s equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. And Renate—then Gretchen Zeitgenbach—was feeding Karen information about the Frankfurt Brotherhood, information from an investigation she was conducting on her own, having been pulled off the case by her bosses at the BKA.

  To this moment, Renate could not remember exactly what had happened that caused her to lose control and go over the embankment. But she did remember being thrown free and tumbling into the brambles that had stopped her fall. She did remember seeing her car explode, a sure sign that the gas tank had been rigged. Karen had died.

  Then…nothing until she awoke in the hospital, battered but alive, and a stranger she later came to know as Jefe told her what had happened. She didn’t even get to see her family. Jefe’s organization had swooped in swiftly and efficiently. The charred body in the car—Karen’s body—was reported as that of Gretchen Zeitgenbach. The woman in the hospital bed had a new name: Renate Bächle.

  Jefe turned her world inside out. She was right. It had been no accident. Not only had the gas tank been tampered with, her brake lines had been punctured. Karen—in lieu of Gretchen Zeitgenbach—had been murdered.

  Shock, then anger, had carried her through the next weeks. Then, as she settled into Jefe’s organization, it had been replaced by the deliberate glacial calm that had become her trademark, a calm that had been broken only when her entire family was killed in one of the Black Christmas bombings, the only bombing that was not directed at a major cathedral. Her family had been the targets, murdered because somehow the Frankfurt Brotherhood knew that Gretchen, in the guise of Renate, was still alive.

  The cool, controlled agent she had tried to become had retreated into the terrified young woman who realized that her personal crusade had brought her into the gun sights of ruthless and very powerful people, and had cost the lives of Karen and her family.

  Now the years peeled away as if they had never been, and she sat rigid, silent and very much lost. The crisp, dry scent of the air in the Schwarzwald. The closeness of the trees. The confident thrumming of the car’s engine as she changed gears. The sound of Karen’s laughter.

  Ulla spoke. “I knew no good could come from that man leading the EU.”

  “No,” Renate answered automatically.

  The sting as brambles pierced her coat and skin. Looking down as the car exploded in the gorge beneath her. Trying to free herself, to rescue her friend, but the brambles would not release their quarry.

  The tangy, stinging scent of antiseptic. The bitter taste of guilt. Lying in a hospital bed. She should be dead, not Karen. She should be dead.

  The flames shown in the brief snatches of video from the warehouse fire joined with the flames in her head. She wanted to scream. Everyone she had left, save for Lawton, would have been in that warehouse. The Brotherhood had tracked her to Rome after she had led a bank surveillance operation in Frankfurt. Renate had killed her would-be assassin outside the Rome train station. But of course the Brotherhood had not quit. Somehow they had uncovered the location of Office 119. And now all her colleagues were dead. All because of her.

  “He was a general. A French general. Of course he would think in these terms.” Ulla threw up her hands. “He knows nothing of diplomacy, nor would he care. Shoot, he thinks.”

  “Perhaps.” Renate struggled to concentrate on what Ulla was saying. Flames. The clip was running again, and she stared at it, hypnotized.

  “There is no ‘perhaps’ about it,” Ulla said flatly. “A general thinks like a
general.” She snorted. “Wenn du nur einen Hammer hast, sieht alles aus wie ein Nagel.”

  “If your only tool is a hammer,” Renate repeated the philosopher Foucault’s saying in English, “everything looks like a nail.” For some reason, English felt comforting to her now, as if everything German was a threat. But then, her German life had left her nothing but bitter ashes.

  Ulla nodded with satisfaction. “That is what we have elected in Soult.” She made a sound of disgust. “I have my doubts about that entire bomb incident that made him such a hero. How could a bomb explode and give him nothing but a few cuts? I am a woman of science. I cannot be fooled by a magician’s trick.”

  Renate murmured agreement, struggling to yank herself out of the past and deal with the enormous complications of the present. Office 119 was gone. No one was left to answer her calls. Even if Jefe and the others had been fortunate enough to escape, protocols required them to instantly change every link in the communications network, to leave nothing of the past behind, so they could disappear again.

  Agents in the field were on their own.

  Digging her nails into her palms and forcing her gaze from the TV, she struggled back into the present. She and Lawton had been attacked in their hotel room. It had to have been the Frankfurt Brotherhood. Yes, some of Soult’s operatives might want revenge for Lawton having killed one of their own, but that would be too high-profile a revenge to risk in these tense times. And if not Soult’s people, then who would want to kill Lawton and Renate?

  As it was so often, the calculus was cruelly simple: Follow the money. The Frankfurt Brotherhood had paid for the operation in Strasbourg that had catapulted Soult into political prominence. He was obviously their handpicked leader for Europe, just as Harrison Rice had been their handpicked leader for the United States until they had overplayed their hand and Rice had thrown off their yoke.

  Nothing else made sense. It must have been the Brotherhood. They’d tried to kill her. Again. And once again, someone had died in her place.

  The critical question was where to go next. She could not stay in Germany. There were too many eyes here who would recognize a face from the past, whisper a word to a trusted friend and, wittingly or unwittingly, put Renate in the crosshairs again. And Ulla Viermann might well be the next person to die in Renate’s place. As she looked over into the kind, intelligent eyes of the young doctor, Renate knew she could not let another life be lost on her account.

  She had long since memorized the procedures for field agents to reestablish contact if the Rome headquarters was compromised. Orphaned agents were to place classified advertisements in La Repubblica, each as an owner looking for a lost dog named after a specific character in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, along with a contact number in Rome. For Renate, the designated pet name was Schivare, “Dodger” in Italian. Whoever remained of Office 119 would monitor the classifieds and contact the orphans as they surfaced.

  But in order to carry out those procedures, she had to be in Rome. Could she get there undetected? How closely were she and Lawton being watched? Unanswered questions rolled around in her head as she fought her way out of the past and into the present.

  “We’ve got to leave,” she said to Ulla. “Now. I cannot endanger you.”

  “Endanger me?” The young doctor turned her attention from the television. “Why should you endanger me?”

  She should not explain, and yet at this moment she had to. Someone had to know what was happening, if for no other reason than so her death—if that was what awaited her in Rome—would not be dismissed as just another tragic but inevitable blip on the radar of life.

  “You see that burning warehouse they’ve been showing?”

  “Ja.” Ulla nodded and looked at the screen. “The one in Rome.”

  “I worked there.”

  Ulla’s jaw dropped a fraction. Then, in an instant, she diagnosed the situation and moved into action. “And already you have been attacked. This is why you need to leave Germany.”

  Renate nodded.

  “You will need disguises,” Ulla said, rising from her chair. Renate tried to object, but the young doctor was already in motion. “I have just the thing.”

  Minutes later, Ulla returned carrying black clothing on hangers laid across her arm and two crooked sticks.

  “What are these?” Renate asked.

  “My father and brother were both Handwerksburschen. Journeymen. Traveling carpenters. I have their uniforms and tools here. My father’s will fit you, and I believe my brother’s will fit your friend.”

  It was a medieval tradition that persisted even today. Upon completing their apprenticeships, carpenters and masons who sought master status had once been required go auf der Walz, to walk around Europe and even into Asia and Russia, working for various masters, learning different techniques. The minimum period of this work-study program was three years and a day, perhaps at first prescribed so that the local master would have time to recoup his investment in training the apprentice before the apprentice returned home and became a competitor.

  Journeymen wore a specific uniform—black trousers, vest, coat and hat, a white shirt, and a pocket watch—and carried all that they owned, including their tools, in a cloth-wrapped bundle known as a Charlottenburger. They were held to a strict standard of conduct, were required to remain unmarried, and could work for no master longer than three months. Each master would stamp the journeyman’s work record, and the journeyman often would add that city’s coat-of-arms to his watch chain, a resume in cheap but treasured metal. During the three-year period, the journeyman was not allowed to work within fifty kilometers of his home. Having completed the three years of itinerant labor, and after passing his examination, he was recognized a master craftsman.

  While the practice was no longer required, nearly a thousand journeymen still chose to take to the road, honing their craft, gaining experience, and working their ways across Europe and now even beyond, as far as Australia in some cases.

  A number of women had, in these modern times, taken up the walk, as well, so it would not be remarkable if Renate and Lawton both wore the uniform.

  And while Handwerksburschen were fewer in number than they had once been, they were still simply itinerant laborers, hardly worthy of a passing glance except by a potential employer or interested tourists. The disguises would render Renate and Lawton almost invisible. People would notice the uniforms, but not their faces.

  Ulla smiled. “I have the Charlottenburger, as well. My brother has new tools.”

  “I can’t take these,” Renate said. “Ulla, they must be precious.”

  “They are precious to no one if they do no good. Take them. You can return them when you are done with them.”

  “I will return them,” Renate said. “I give my word.”

  It was a promise she intended to keep. Even if it cost her her life.

  28

  Querbach, Germany

  H ans Neufel sat on the turret of his tank with his legs crossed and a notepad in his lap, looking down across the gently sloping fields at the city of Kehl and the Europabrücke. His platoon was positioned on the forward slope of a ridgeline between the villages of Querbach and Kork, seven kilometers east-northeast of the bridge itself. From his position, he could observe every vehicle crossing the bridge, as well as the French forces massing beyond it, south of Strasbourg.

  Beobachten und berichten. Observe and report. Those were his orders, and he would carry them out.

  On the surface, it felt like just another field exercise, complete with Leutnant Bräuburger’s incessant pea counting. Perhaps if the four tanks of his platoon had been in hull-down positions back in the tree line, nestled into earthen berms that concealed all but their turrets, he could let himself believe that this was simply an exercise, rehearsing the field manual doctrines for defense against a river crossing.

  But his platoon was three hundred meters in front of those positions, in plain view of the French observers, who were doub
tless watching him at that very moment.

  His platoon was not hidden because it was intended to be seen, men and steel spelling out an unmistakable message: Germany will not be cowed.

  The weight of consequences hung over every moment of every day. Peter Schulingen, his loader, had joked that he would bare his heat-rash-reddened buttocks to the French, prompting laughter from Neufel’s crew until he fixed them with an icy glare that killed the moment. In a situation like this, such a gesture could make the difference between war and peace.

  Neufel had no desire to fire his tank’s twelve centimeter cannon at a live target, nor to hide within his tank’s fifty-five-ton bulk from bursting French artillery. Surely those in power would step back from the brink before the fighting erupted. Because once it did…

  Neufel tried not to think about that possibility, yet he could not prevent himself. Those were real French tanks and armored personnel carriers on the plains south of Strasbourg. And from airfields farther west, televised reports showed real Mirage 2000 fighter-bombers, loaded with real bombs and missiles. All were manned by real French troops, men just like Neufel, men he might well have met during his NATO postings. Men who, if the orders were given, would be as intent on killing him as he would be on killing them.

  And for all that his platoon’s presence on this ridge was intended as a visible deterrent, Neufel knew that it was more than that. For while his platoon was in the open, the remainder of his company lay in carefully concealed positions in the fighting line to which he would retire if deterrence failed, part of a battalionsized tripwire that would harass and delay any crossing until the rest of his brigade could deliver a counterattack.

  Similar tripwires had been set up opposite the other Rhine bridges in Soult’s declared security zone, but Neufel knew his battalion bore the greatest responsibility. The Europabrücke was adjacent to a rail bridge. That railway, along with the two highways that emerged from Kehl, would be essential supply arteries for a French force attempting to operate in Soult’s fifty-kilometer zone. The attack, if it came, would have to come here.