The Rendition

by Albert Ashforth

  “You’re overreacting.”

  “Something else I’ve never been told: Why it is that everyone’s so interested in Nadaj? Why did we make him the target of a rendition?”

  “Is that all that’s bothering you?”

  “What’s bothering me is that I haven’t been told why I’m over here. That’s why I’m leaving.”

  “Do you know what I think, Alex?” When I didn’t respond, she said, “I think the same things I did at Floyd Bennett. You’re afraid. You’re afraid of Nadaj because of what happened in Kosovo. Maybe Jerry’s right. You’re afraid Nadaj’ll capture you and throw you back into that hole you told me about.” She turned, headed toward the kitchen. “I’m going to make myself a cup of tea. Would you like one?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I think I’m right.”

  I said, “No, Sylvia, you’re wrong. Nadaj has nothing to do with it.” I followed her into the small kitchen, where she retrieved a box of tea from the pantry. “What I don’t like is that you and Shenlee haven’t leveled with me.” I watched as she measured out the tea and poured in the boiling water into a teapot and pulled cups and saucers down from the cabinet. From a drawer, she took out a small strainer. She’d all at once become very prim and was clearly making a point of ignoring me.

  If she’d again said that I was afraid of Nadaj, I would have thrown her out the window. Fortunately, she didn’t.

  “It’s very simple. I’m leaving because you haven’t been honest with me.”

  “Oh, really?” The top button of her blouse was undone, and I couldn’t help noticing that her jeans were very tight. Sylvia had not only nice legs but a nice rear end. She poured the tea from the teapot out into two cups, gave me one of the cups.

  Back in the living room, I said, “Yes, really.”

  “You have a contract. You break it and leave me stranded here, I’ll see you never work again.”

  “I have my own business. I’m independent.”

  “I’ll get laws passed in that town—what’s the name again?”

  “Saranac.”

  “Right. Saranac. You’ll be in violation of every local ordinance. Your ice business will go under.”

  “The iceman cometh—and goeth.”

  “You’re an idiot. You’re going to go bankrupt, and all you can do is crack unfunny jokes.”

  “I never let my ice melt.”

  “Your ice will melt and you’ll be bankrupt.”

  “You’ll freeze my assets.”

  “You won’t have any assets to freeze.”

  Sylvia was right, of course. There was no way I could break the contract at this point. But when I saw alarm in Sylvia’s hooded blue eyes, I had the feeling she thought I was about to go out and buy a plane ticket.

  But there was a serious side to this little squabble. I like to think I can depend on the people I’m working with, and I wasn’t at all sure I could depend on Sylvia or Shenlee, both of whom were super ambitious and had their own personal agendas. In the pressure-filled environment in which they worked, you needed ambition and toughness to survive.

  “You know,” I said finally, “I think I’d like to see Nadaj again.”

  “Good. You may have the opportunity.”

  Badly in need of some time to do some thinking, I grabbed my jacket. “I feel like some fresh air.” Standing with her hands on her hips, Sylvia watched with an uncertain look on her face. “I’ve decided to go for a walk.”

  Out on the sidewalk, I felt the effect of the fresh air and began to relax. As I walked, I tried to figure out what was going on. If this case connected to Nadaj or led us back to Nadaj, I’d have an opportunity to pay back a few people for what happened last March. According to Sylvia, she was actually doing me a big favor by getting me over here, but Buck laughed when I mentioned that to him.

  I enjoy walking, and once I got started, I didn’t feel like stopping. In at least one way, it was good being back. As I thought about Irmie, I had the feeling someone had turned the clock back eight or nine years. I stopped at a café for a cup of coffee, then angled over to the Nymphenburgerstrasse, a wide street with a lot of apartment buildings and the courthouse at the far end. I lived for a couple of weeks in an apartment in one of the buildings, but I no longer remembered which one. Back then, I had a lot on my mind.

  When I got back to the building two hours later, I said hello to a young married couple who were leaving.

  Inside the apartment, I could smell chicken frying. Standing at the counter in her stocking feet and wearing an orange apron, Sylvia was cutting up a tomato and making a salad. I hadn’t known she was domestic.

  “While you were gone, I went food shopping. Are you hungry?”

  “I’m starved.”

  “Would you mind taking a look in the pantry? I need some salt.”

  I said, “We’ve had our first argument.”

  She fixed me with a stern expression. “Uh-uh. You’re forgetting the hospital. That was our first argument. This was our second. And I’ve won them both. That’s something you should keep in mind. You might also want to keep in mind that I’m running this operation, and you don’t so much as take a shit without asking my permission. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “And when I give you permission, then you squat and ask, ‘What color?’ ”

  “If you say so.” I was impressed by Sylvia’s familiarity with the vernacular of the U.S. Army’s drill instructors.

  “I say so,” she said quietly. “Now would you mind bringing me the salt?”

  Chapter 13

  Thursday, January 24, 2008

  Douglas Brinkman eyed me suspiciously, then asked, “Just who are you anyway?”

  We were sitting opposite one another in one of the small interview rooms of Munich’s Stadelheim Prison, a thick plate of glass between us. There were two other inmates in the room, both of them talking guardedly to people who could have been family members or lawyers. A guard was stationed at the door, and another was seated on a chair at a point against the wall that gave him a view of everybody’s hands.

  It was two days after the break-in, a cloudy Thursday. I’d called the prison the previous day, and Sylvia had spoken with someone at the consulate. She’d arranged for an attaché to provide me with a letter on consulate letterhead that said I was speaking to Brinkman on behalf of the American government in connection with his legal representation.

  Even at that, getting into Stadelheim had taken time. I’d had to jawbone with guards at the entrance, fill out forms, submit to a search, then spend a half hour in a waiting room with a bunch of other visitors, all of whom were women. Before leaving, when I’d asked Sylvia what I should be looking for, she said that she’d lost contact with Brinkman after his arrest and wanted me to see how he was holding up.

  When Brinkman asked who I was, I didn’t see I had any choice but to keep my answer vague. I said, “I’m here at the request of someone in our government.”

  “Who in our government?”

  Brinkman was over six feet, had a square face, a broad mouth, and thin lips. Despite his size, he seemed to move gracefully, almost like a big cat. Like the other inmates, he was wearing a blue shirt with an open collar and blue work pants. He had brown hair cut short. In German prisons, everything is regulated—from the size of your calorie in-take to the length of your hair.

  Something else about German lockups—no weight rooms or TV. In German jails you only do hard time. Although they don’t have capital punishment, prisoners have been known to die from boredom.

  “Someone who wants to get you out of here.”

  “Well, tell them they sure as hell better get me out of here,” Douglas Brinkman said. “Tell your boss that.”

  I nodded. The overall game plan called for me to find out what was happening in Brinkman’s life—and if possible keep him from ever having to appear in a German court. Exactly how I was going to manage all that was anybody’s guess, and I was, as usual, flyi
ng by the seat of my pants.

  “How are you handling all this?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just that I don’t want to spend the next twenty-five years in this place.”

  “How’s the food?”

  “Lousy, and they don’t give you enough. I’ve lost weight in here. I’d rather eat MREs.” MREs are Meals Ready to Eat, which soldiers are issued on maneuvers and in battle. At Fort Bragg we gave them the politically incorrect name of “Meals Rejected by Ethiopians.”

  Brinkman paused briefly as one of the guards ambled over, gazed at us curiously, then strolled away. I said, “We intend to get you out of this mess, one way or the other.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. The walls to this room were awfully thick, and beyond the building there was a forty-foot-high wall with guard posts every few yards. A jailbreak was out of the question.

  “Yeah, yeah. Of course you will. You’re here to help me, is that it?” When I nodded, he took a deep breath, then ran his fingers over the edge of the table.

  “How are you gonna do that?”

  “I’ll need some information first.”

  “Like what?”

  “You could maybe begin by telling me how you got into this situation.”

  “I got into it because I knew Ursula.” He paused. “I’ve told Owen, the guy from the consulate, all this stuff.”

  “You knew Miss Vogt pretty well?” When he nodded, I asked, “How well?” Now that I knew what he looked like, I knew that there weren’t any pictures of Brinkman in the photo collection of Ursula Vogt. It seemed she’d mostly hung out with the Taliban people. “How did you come to meet her?”

  “I’m not sure I should be answering these questions.”

  “Why? What do you have to hide? If you’re innocent—”

  “I’m still not sure who you are.”

  “I can’t help you otherwise.”

  “How’s this all going to help? I’m tired of telling the story. Your people should know all this.”

  “I don’t know how it will help. We’ll see.”

  After a brief pause, he said, “I met her in Afghanistan. Have you ever heard of Mazar-e-Sharif? It’s northwest of Tora Bora. We had a prison there, and there had been an attempted breakout. She got wind of it and turned up, had a photographer with her.”

  “Then what?”

  “She told me she was a correspondent for Welt-Bericht. I thought she was pretty gutsy. She spoke good English. I know some German. I was stationed over here for a while, down in Tölz.”

  “Flint Kaserne?”

  When I said that, Brinkman looked surprised. Bad Tölz at one time was European headquarters for Special Forces 10th Group, before the command closed down the post and moved to a location near Stuttgart. Flint Kaserne was the name of the former installation.

  “You know it?”

  I nodded. “I was there too.” I figured he might warm up to me a little if he knew I’d been with Special Forces, even if my stay hadn’t been all that long.

  Brinkman didn’t say anything, but it was clear he liked the idea that he was talking to a former member of the brotherhood. I asked him what it was he and Ursula Vogt found to talk about.

  “Well, she was a reporter, so she wanted to pick up whatever she could about the American invasion. We’d only been in country about two months then.”

  “That’s all it was? Just business?”

  “Boy meets girl. You know how it is. Afterward, we talked about all kinds of things.”

  “Politics, you mean? The world situation?”

  “She wanted to know what was going on with us. With the Americans. The Germans call us Amis.”

  I said, “Not as bad as some of the things we call them.”

  “She was very interested in the American military. How things ran, all that kind of stuff.”

  “How much did you tell her?” When he shrugged, I figured he knew she’d been pumping him. I said, “Did you two spend a lot of time together?”

  He nodded. “Afterward, yeah. I ran into her in Kabul, in the Ariana Hotel.”

  “How often?”

  “I was part of the Special Operations force. After Tora Bora, I spent time in Kabul. We’d be going on missions all the time. But we talked, sure. I’d get back. A few times she was out there. With us.”

  “Out where?”

  “Out in the mountains. She had a lot of freedom. Her paper let her go pretty much where she wanted.”

  “So you saw quite a bit of one another?” I had visions of the two of them sharing a sleeping bag, à la Hemingway.

  He frowned. I could see he didn’t like the questions.

  I said, “Did you think Afghanistan was going to be your last tour?”

  “I guess. But everything changed later. But, yeah, I was thinking of getting out at that time. I’d put in close to twenty years. It was time to do something else. I couldn’t see the sense in going back to Bragg again. All that training gets old after a while.” He shook his head. “Fighting the war wasn’t as bad as training for it.”

  I nodded sympathetically. I knew what he meant. At Bad Tölz reveille was at 0345 hours and we woke up by swimming a couple of laps in an ice-cold swimming pool. “Is that the reason you wanted out? Because you didn’t want to go back to Fort Bragg?”

  He looked at me suspiciously, then he nodded. “Like I say, everything changed later. I went back to Afghanistan in 2003.”

  I turned the conversation back to Ursula Vogt. “How come you came to Munich?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why didn’t you go back to the States? That’s what most guys do.”

  “I’m not most guys.”

  I had the feeling I was losing him. I could see I’d said something that was bothering him. After being surrounded by foreigners for so long, he liked the idea of talking English with someone, and maybe that was the main reason he was willing to see me. But he didn’t like all the questions. “Munich’s a nice city. I’d been stationed down in Tölz. I knew my way around.”

  I thought about what Max had told me—that he’d broken up a bar. Although I wondered what might have brought that on, I decided not to mention it. A little alcohol, together with a lot of frustration, once led me to do something like that. Fortunately, First Sergeant Aubrey kept the lid on, and I got off with an Article 15 and by paying damages to the bar owner. By this time, Brinkman was frowning. I decided not to push matters. I had an idea he’d maybe be more open about things if I came around again. I’d broken the ice, or at least I hoped I had.

  When I told him I was about to leave, he said, “So what’s going to happen? The Krauts wanna try me for murder.”

  I said, “We’ll see.”

  “Mr. Owen says they’re arranging for another lawyer. The first one they had got sick or something.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had an idea the lawyer might have sensed there were more angles to this case than he wanted to handle. Or he might have been disqualified by people back in D.C.

  I said, “You’re innocent, and we may be able to get you off before things get that far.”

  “How far?”

  “To a trial.” Then I recalled my visit to Ursula Vogt’s house. “One more thing.” The guard had come over and was pointing at his watch. I told him I needed another minute. He frowned, then nodded. “Did you know the handyman that worked for Miss Vogt?”

  “Oh, you mean Quemal? Yeah, he came around twice when I was there. Ursula didn’t like him.”

  “Was that his name? Quemal?” When Brinkman nodded, I wondered whether it was the same Quemal who was with Nadaj in Kosovo. If so, he was definitely on the short list of people I hoped to one day encounter in my travels.

  Brinkman thought for a moment, then said, “Ursula said her publisher arranged for the guy to come around. She said he gave her the creeps.” When I asked him what else he knew about him, he said, “Not much. I know he hung around this club—”

  “Club? What kind of club?”

 
; “An Albanian club.”

  “Was this Quemal Albanian?”

  “Not exactly. He spoke Albanian, but he said he came from Kosovo.”

  “What was the name of the club?”

  “The Kalashni Klub,” Brinkman said. “The club was called the Kalashni Klub, short for Kalashnikov, the assault rifle. There’s a little sign with a picture of the weapon in front.” He smiled. “Bang, bang—if you know what I mean.”

  “Where is this place?”

  “On the road toward Ingolstadt. You know where that is?” I nodded, recalling that I once made a trip to Ingolstadt to pick up a new car from the Audi factory.

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “I gave him a lift one time. We went inside. I had a schnapps, and left.” He grinned. “Lots of chicks hanging around, if you know what I mean.”

  As I pushed back my chair and stood up, he looked at me but didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll try to get back to you.” I wasn’t sure when I could get in again.

  “Mr. Owen said he’d come tomorrow. Can I mention I talked with you?”

  “I think it’ll be okay.” I knew that Owen, coming from the consulate, would have an easier time getting into the prison than I just had.

  As I was leaving, I said, “De Oppresso Liber.” It’s the Special Forces motto, and means “to free the oppressed.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Brinkman said without enthusiasm. If he was thinking of himself as one of the oppressed, I couldn’t blame him for that.

  When I was out of the prison and driving home, I punched in Max’s number on my cell phone.

  “The Kalashni Klub, Max, you know it? Some kind of Albanian hangout?”

  “Every cop in Munich knows the K Klub, Alex. Steer clear of the place.”

  “I want to take a look, Max. And I’d like some backup. Someone who has some authority in this city.”

  “No. Absolutely not. I’m retired, and I’m not accompanying you to that place.” Before I could say anything more, Max said, “I know how you operate, and I’m not getting mixed up in one of your schemes. Those days are over.”

  “I don’t have to go in right away. I can wait a few days—”

  “Listen, Alex, and listen carefully. Things aren’t like they used to be. It’s not ten years ago.”