The FBI Thrillers Collection: Vol 11-15

by Catherine Coulter

  "Not particularly," said Kesselring, "but they go well with this particular suit, so I suffer them when I have to. I'm in a foreign country, and I must try to look as respectable as I can."

  Sherlock said, "What have you been up to today, Agent?"

  Kesselring smiled. Again, Savich saw a flash of hot violence in his eyes when he looked at Sherlock, but his voice sounded amused when he finally spoke. "Nice of you to ask, Agent Sherlock. I was at Schiffer Hartwin's headquarters, learning very little of use. I was hoping Carla Alvarez would have something to say, but she didn't."

  Bowie said, "I was just telling Agent Sherlock that Caskie Royal ran away at a rest stop on the way here from JFK with the Schiffer Hartwin directors. Our agents are trying to find him, but no word yet."

  Kesselring looked startled. "You say he ran away from them at a rest stop? How very interesting. I cannot fathom why he would do such an odd thing, and in such a manner. Dr. Dieffendorf and Herr Gerlach must tell us what happened. One is tempted to conclude Mr. Royal ran because he's guilty of a crime, perhaps even of this murder."

  Bowie said, "So you no longer believe it was a psychotic mugger who murdered Herr Blauvelt? Now you believe it was Caskie Royal? Why?"

  If the light touch of sarcasm failed to float over Kesselring's head, he gave no clue, at least Sherlock thought so until she saw the glint in Kesselring's very nice green eyes. "Why else, Agent Richards, would Caskie Royal run?"

  Bowie said, "I'm certain we will find out soon enough."

  Kesselring looked at his elegant Piaget watch. "At any rate, the directors should be here in an hour or so. They will no doubt be tired. It is a long flight from Frankfurt to New York, and they are not young men. I understand their limo driver is taking them directly to their hotel. I suspect they will wish to rest tonight. If so, I will take you to see them at the Schiffer Hartwin headquarters in the morning."

  "Don't forget the lawyers, Agent Kesselring," Sherlock said easily. "Perhaps they will be able to tell us what frightened Caskie Royal so very much he felt he had to run for his life."

  38

  Kesselring didn't rise to the bait, though it was meaty. He merely swung his foot, tented his fingers, and tapped them against his chin, smiling charmingly at her. But his eyes, his eyes. "I find this case a fascinating conundrum. And this abrupt departure of Mr. Royal is yet one more thread to unravel. Please remember I am here to help you do that." And he gave each of them a long look.

  Erin made a little sound in her throat and opened her eyes, saw Savich, and smiled. "You're back. Hi. I'm very glad to see you."

  "Hi, yourself, Erin. I'm glad to see that smile on your face. You okay?"

  She queried her body, nodded. "Yeah, I'll live." She turned her head slightly to look at the strange man sitting in the lone chair. A feast for the eyes, she thought, and would you just look at those exquisite Italian loafers on that swinging foot. She wouldn't mind wearing them herself. Her father had loved Italian loafers, particularly the ones with the tassels. She didn't smile at him. "Who are you?"

  Kesselring rose and walked to stand beside Savich at the foot of her bed. He gave her a sharp bow. "My name is Agent Andreas Kesselring. I was sent here from Germany to help in the investigation of Herr Blauvelt's murder. You are a dance teacher. Your name is Erin Pulaski. Why is everyone here with you and not out chasing down Caskie Royal?"

  "I'm a very important dance teacher since I also take care of Agent Richards's daughter."

  "His daughter? I did not know this, but that is hardly the point. Why are you important?"

  Erin felt only a slight aching in her back, but nothing terrible. It wasn't the morphine talking, either. Most of the stuff was already out of her bloodstream. She felt alert and stronger, and realized she'd been luckier than she deserved. Bless you, Daddy. Very slowly, she rolled over and sat up, ignoring Sherlock's hand. She felt a twinge in her back, but it wasn't anything she couldn't handle. She said, dropping her voice to a whisper, "I'm important because I know things."

  "What things could you possibly know to make someone try to blow you up?"

  She knew it infuriated this lovely man, but she asked Sherlock, "Is it all right to speak to him?"

  "Feel free," Sherlock said, and patted her hand.

  Kesselring said, his voice hard, "Come, tell us what you know that makes you such a threat to-someone?"

  "I know what everyone in this room knows: namely, Caskie Royal is a crook. Schiffer Hartwin are crooks. Herr Blauvelt is dead, brutally murdered. He was a crook too."

  "Those are scurrilous things to say, Ms. Pulaski. Hopefully they're also completely unfounded. Well, Herr Blauvelt is dead, but as for the other-"

  "It's simple," Erin said right over him. "It's about corrupt pharmaceutical houses looking for every possible way to make money, and not caring who they hurt on the way. It's all about their bottom line."

  "Where did you get these ideas, Ms. Pulaski? The drug companies have done amazing things, amazing. They've produced medicines that have eradicated diseases."

  "I now believe any good they do is secondary to their goal, which is making money and more money."

  "Come now, what does any of this have to do with a ballet teacher?"

  Erin looked him dead in the eye. "Agent Kesselring, are you a crook as well?"

  Kesselring studied her face a long silent moment, then said with great precision, "I am a ten-year veteran of the BND, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service. I have dozens of awards and commendations to prove it. I ask you again: How do you purport to know anything that would push someone to try to kill you?"

  "I don't know anything about you, Agent Kesselring." Erin turned to look at Bowie, wincing just a bit with the movement. "I am all right, I'm not lying to you. What I am is very mad. Someone tried to kill me. That someone blew up my Hummer. Get me out of here. I want to rent a car, then I want to go home."

  "May I accompany you?" Kesselring asked.

  "Like I said, Agent Kesselring, I don't know you, but let me hasten to add I do understand why Agent Cliff was so pleased to drive you in from New York."

  He snorted, which was really quite charming, and she had to repress a smile. "She is a woman of excellent character and taste. No one wishes to see you hurt, Ms. Pulaski, especially because you are a dance teacher who knows something you shouldn't, and that, for heaven's sake, is what exactly?"

  Erin slowly swung her legs over the side of the hospital bed. "What I know is that I'm dancing out of here."

  39

  MERRIAM BARTLETT HOTEL

  STONE BRIDGE, CONNECTICUT

  Thursday evening

  "I will, of course, support you in whatever you decide to do," Werner Gerlach said to Adler Dieffendorf as he hung up his favorite light blue suit with its very narrow light gray pinstripes. The wool was so soft now that it felt like a cozy old friend. He spoke in German, since no one in this impertinent uncivilized country felt the need to speak another language, and so it was safe. He stroked the material a moment and left it carefully hung on a padded hanger in the too-small closet.

  Dieffendorf turned from the window. "While you were in the bathroom, I called Agent Kesselring to tell him Caskie Royal had run away. He already knew. He had to agree it seems likely our own man, the CEO we trusted, murdered poor Helmut. It's a shock, but one keeps coming back to it-why else would he have run?"

  Gerlach said, his head still in the closet, "Royal killed him because Helmut must have found Royal was involved with Renard, Royal probably planned the sabotage of the Spanish plant with Renard as well." Gerlach shrugged. "They must have fought, and somehow, though it is hard to believe, Royal got the better of him, killed him. I didn't want to believe it, but now? I fear there is no other conclusion." Gerlach looked around his miserly little room which connected to Dieffendorf's one-bedroom suite in the Merriam Bartlett hotel, the
only superior lodging for gamblers at the nearby Indian casino. Dieffendorf's bedroom was much larger than his. He watched Dieffendorf as he sat down in a cream-and-green-striped wing chair next to a window overlooking a vast woodland, and drummed his fingertips together. "Royal must have connected with Renard, right? I wonder if he had the spine to call him, or if Renard called Royal? There is no way Royal could have pulled off the sabotage of the Spanish plant by himself, and in any case, why would he? Without Renard, there wouldn't be a profit. It even smells like Renard, don't you think?"

  Gerlach shrugged, carefully placing paddled shoe trees into another pair of shoes. "I know nothing more than you do, Adler."

  "I do not know what to tell the family. They look to me to keep scandal away from the door. But now? I have failed." Gerlach knew Dieffendorf had always worshipped at the feet of the Schiffer family. They'd always insisted the managing director be a medical doctor, and Adler was, having earned his medical degree in endocrinology. What Adler really excelled at, Gerlach thought, was looking both wise and benevolent. Gerlach wondered how many people besides him knew Dieffendorf was the most ruthless man in the room. Gerlach had often wondered if Dieffendorf's precious Schiffer family knew how skilled their managing director was at subtly skewing data so the drug in question was seen as effective enough, or safe enough, to pass review. He was renowned for it, in fact, impressed even the staff writers hired to ghostwrite many of the review articles presented by physicians to the major U.S. medical journals, a longtime practice by the drug companies only recently discovered, causing much chagrin in the medical journal review boards. It was a pity. But Gerlach knew that when one door closed, another opened, like the American FDA's recent approval of drug testing conducted outside the U.S., where the pharmaceuticals would be able to do just about anything they pleased. Didn't the idiots realize this? Not only were they making it cheaper for the drug companies, it meant the bribing of local officials would increase exponentially. Who would care about illegal drug tests run on local natives in backward countries? No one cared now. Gerlach couldn't see anything changing. As long as Dieffendorf and Helmut Blauvelt kept the problems plausibly deniable, the results pleased the family more than their consciences would bother them. But now Blauvelt was dead. It didn't matter, Dieffendorf would soon sniff out another Blauvelt. There were more Blauvelts in this world than anyone imagined. Gerlach said, "Helmut's murder really bothers you, doesn't it?"

  "Why do you sound so surprised? I have known and trusted Helmut for ten years. There are others, of course, and I will be forced to rely on them, but I have never trusted anyone like I trusted and depended on Helmut."

  "Yes, I too am sorry for it." Gerlach looked over at his boss of more than twenty years, the one always seated on the royal throne, the bastard. But there was one area where Gerlach was the king and so he dug out his knife. He smiled at Dieffendorf, and said in a complacent voice he knew Adler hated, "I miss my wife."

  "I miss Claire too," Dieffendorf said, staring out the window, swinging his foot rhythmically back and forth until Gerlach wanted to kick him. "It is a constant ache." Dieffendorf's wife had died of breast cancer six years earlier. He'd even tried two experimental drugs. Nothing had worked.

  "I know," Gerlach said as he turned back to the closet to hang up one of his three Savile Row white dress shirts.

  Dieffendorf looked over at Gerlach now, his voice meditative as he said, "It was such a shock when your precious Mathilde was struck by that hit-and-run motorcycle driver last year. I remember you couldn't stop crying at her funeral."

  "Yes, it was very difficult. It was good to have all my friends there to support me."

  Dieffendorf paused a moment, then added, a drip of acid on his tongue, "Laytha, your wife of eight months, is your son's age, Werner." Beneath the drip of acid there was a note of disapproval in his deep resonant voice, but he was masking his envy, Gerlach knew it.

  And envy was what Gerlach had wanted to hear. "Actually, Laytha is younger than Klaus by nearly a year," he said comfortably, and gave Dieffendorf a sly smile. "I told you she has a sister who is also very lovely, and very well educated. I believe she just turned twenty-five."

  "I prefer not to agitate my children, all of whom are older than this sister." Dieffendorf pushed himself up to his feet. It seemed each year slowed down some other part of him. He saw himself in fifteen years with no moving parts at all. It crossed his mind that when everything stopped moving, he'd just fall over and die. That would be preferable to cancer.

  "Why are we talking about your wife? Good grief, Werner, we must decide about our interview with the American FBI agents we'll see tomorrow."

  Gerlach shrugged. "There is no other choice but to tell them part of the truth, which, I suspect, they probably believe themselves-Caskie Royal is responsible for the Culovort shortage in the United States, he pressed forward on his own authority. He may also be responsible for the murder of Helmut Blauvelt. They know nothing about Renard. I see no reason to enlighten them.

  "If they find Royal, they can surely extract a confession from him, discover why he planned the shortage, and that he acted on his own. You are skillful, Adler, you will steer them away from considering any company involvement. They will close their case. Then we will go home and I will be with Laytha." Gerlach calmly hung up the third shirt.

  Dieffendorf gave him a sharp nod and walked back toward the suite. He turned in the doorway. "The Culovort papers are Schiffer Hartwin documents. If they surface, it will hardly be as easy as all that."

  40

  ERIN'S APARTMENT

  Thursday evening

  "Is Georgie asleep?"

  Sherlock nodded to Savich, watching Erin as Bowie handed her two aspirins and a glass of water. After she'd taken the pills, Sherlock added, "I only read her two pages of Nancy Drew, and luckily, she was down and out." She turned to Erin and Bowie. "She said to give you both a kiss. If you like, I'll pass on that."

  Sherlock sat down beside Dillon, and Bowie moved to join her. Erin realized she was sitting by herself, the three of them sitting opposite her, together, silent and waiting. She was in the dock. Confession time.

  Sherlock said, "Georgie's asleep, the dishes are washed and put away, you've got aspirin on board. It's time, Erin. Tell us why you broke into Caskie Royal's office and printed the Culovort papers off his computer."

  Bowie froze. Sherlock wondered if he'd guessed this was Erin's secret, but seeing him staring at Erin, shock clear on his face, obviously he hadn't.

  Sherlock lightly laid her fingertips to his arm. "I can't let this go on any longer, Erin. Not only don't I want to see you killed, what you know is critical to our investigation."

  Bowie stared down at Sherlock's fingers on his arm. Was she afraid he was going to start screaming at Erin? Maybe leap up and strangle her?

  Bowie couldn't believe it, simply couldn't. "Yes," he said, his voice perfectly pleasant, "please tell us everything."

  Erin didn't look at him. She knew she'd see his dawning sense of betrayal, and she couldn't bear it. Sherlock was right, there was too much on the line now to hold back any longer. She said, "Yes, it's past time. How long have you known I was the one who pulled off the break-in, Sherlock?"

  "I wondered about your level of interest. I thought it was really over the top, your intensity, the way you were so very focused on every word we said. And the clincher was our witness, who described you perfectly."

  Savich sat forward, his hands clasped between his knees. "You were friendly, Erin, you were charming, but you didn't act exactly right around the three of us, particularly Bowie."

  "What do you mean? I acted weird around Bowie?"

  "I didn't say weird," Savich said. "You just acted off. Bowie would have seen it for himself if he hadn't been so caught up in the investigation of Blauvelt's murder, and, naturally, his worry about his daughter.

  "
Of course I checked you out," Savich continued. "And that led me to your dad. You'd told us about his being a consultant to law enforcement for the last twenty years of his life, but not the nitty-gritty details like the specialized skills he taught-building security for the new millennium, situational and strategic planning-like what to do if you're caught somewhere you shouldn't be, whether behind enemy lines or in a CEO's office. Oh, yes, I should mention he was known to be able to pick any lock in the known universe. You were lucky there were thick bushes below that bathroom window to break your fall."

  Sherlock said, "I bet you learned everything from him, including lock picking. Time to get it all out, Erin. Tell us all of it."

  Bowie remained silent. Erin wanted to punch him, make him say something, anything. "I don't want to go to jail, Sherlock. Am I going to need a lawyer?"

  Bowie said, his voice too calm, too controlled, "I'm going to see to it you have the greenest public defender in Connecticut."

  "I'll just say it would be a good idea for you to cooperate," Savich said. "I assume that you didn't kill Helmut Blauvelt? That you don't know anything about his murder?"

  "No, I only heard about his murder on TV the next morning."

  "Then there are the Culovort papers, Erin. Who is your client?"

  Erin got to her feet and walked to her fireplace, removed the brick and pulled out a sheaf of papers. "You already know all of this, Dillon, you homed in on the Culovort shortage on your own. These are simply Caskie Royal's detailed plans for shutting down the supply from the plant in Missouri. He couched it as a profitable upgrade, but again, I think you might have nailed it. There wasn't much money in it for him unless he colluded with Laboratoires Ancondor in France for a share of their profits when cancer patients were forced to switch to their expensive oral drug, Eloxium.

  "I don't know how he was paid, he doesn't talk about that in the papers, but maybe stock options, maybe some under-the-table kickbacks paid outright to Royal by the CEO of Ancondor when the huge bucks started rolling in. I'm not all that smart when it comes to finances, but I suppose there have got to be more ways to make this work for him.