Looking at me, Brinkman said, “I still can’t believe it worked. Someone deserves a lot of credit for pulling this off.”
“It’s what we get paid for,” Sylvia said coolly. “I spoke with Harry Owen a few minutes ago on the phone. He said he kept asking the guards for directions, playing the role of the dumb American. He was able to keep them busy, and that bought us a few extra minutes.”
I didn’t say anything. The truth was, we weren’t anywhere near out of the woods yet. We were in a car parked just off the road twenty-five miles south of Munich. We still needed to get Brinkman out of the country. I assumed Sylvia knew how to take care of that end of things.
Looking at me, she said, “You and I still have things to talk over.” Still wearing his suit and tie, Brinkman looked more like a lawyer than an escaped prisoner, and I figured it was safe to leave him in the parked car for a few minutes. Sylvia told him to wait while she and I took a short stroll.
As we walked along the highway, Sylvia said, “The police might try to connect you to Doug’s escape. Have your story ready.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I shrugged. “Whatever they think, they can’t prove anything.”
I was wondering when we could wind up this operation. Although Sedfrit was the primary suspect in Quemal’s murder, it was still possible that the cops might determine he was innocent. If that happened, they’d look for another suspect—and that very well could be me. I wanted to be out of Munich before that happened.
I said, “Have you talked with D.C.?”
“Of course. I had approval for this operation, if that’s what you’re wondering. We have to keep Doug under wraps—”
“Major Brinkman, you mean.”
Sylvia colored. After a second, she said, “While they’re working out the details for getting Major Brinkman out of the country, he stays with me. People won’t breathe easy until they know he’s on a plane back to the States.”
“How long do you figure?”
“Two days, maybe three. There’ll be some red tape. There always is. I’ll be back as soon as I can make it. If the police call you down, don’t volunteer anything.”
I wondered where Sylvia was headed—probably to another safe house somewhere, and then to one of our military installations. Her people in D.C. would have indicated where she and Brinkman could hole up. I assumed that she and Doug might use this opportunity to renew old acquaintances. After Brinkman had shaken himself loose from Ursula Vogt, Sylvia showed up in Afghanistan, and they’d almost certainly become lovers out there.
I wasn’t jealous. The only woman I ever thought about was Irmie. And I thought about her day and night.
“Something else, Alex. See what you can find out about Nadaj.”
I wondered how I was supposed to manage that.
We’d walked in a circle, and now we were back at the car where Brinkman was waiting. The only other car in the rest area contained a married couple and two small children, who were eating sandwiches. It was a miracle, but so far, the cops hadn’t caught up with us. I gave her the keys and Sylvia climbed in behind the wheel.
“I’ll be with Doug for a couple of days. Remember, Nadaj is still a high-value target.”
“It might be easier for me if I knew why we’re so interested in Nadaj.” Sylvia was silent for a moment, probably figuring just how much I needed to know. In this business the rule is ironclad. You don’t tell anyone anything. But we both knew I needed more of a sense of what was going on.
After a second, Sylvia nodded at Brinkman. “Tell us how you met Ursula.”
Leaning forward from the back seat, Brinkman began to talk. “It was in Mazar-e-Sharif, maybe six months into my first tour. We were getting ready to move into the Shahikot Valley.”
Sylvia said, “I was out there. It’s just a small town, but there was a walled-in compound on the outskirts. Our people set up a prison there.”
I was familiar with Mazar-e-Sharif, where the CIA lost an interrogator during the first days of the war. Looking at Brinkman, I said, “You were with the Fifth Group?” I was referring to the Special Forces Group then active in Afghanistan.
Brinkman nodded. “Headquarters Detachment, Third Battalion. We were reconnoitering, trying to figure the best way into the mountains when we got a radio alert. Something was going down back in Mazar-e-Sharif, at the prison. So I rounded up as many guys as I could, and we headed up there.”
“Tell him what you found,” Sylvia said.
“It was bad,” Brinkman said. “Our people had taken over five hundred al-Qaeda prisoners, but we had only a dozen guys guarding them. They’d begun to riot, and they’d managed to bang a big hole in one of the walls. Just as we arrived, the prisoners started pouring through. The guards had taken cover, but they wouldn’t have had a chance against those numbers.”
“How’d you manage it?” I asked.
“I was driving a Toyota pickup. Drove it right up against the wall where the break was, climbed out. I know a little Pashto. I started shouting, Wadarega yaa dee wulim! Halt or we’ll shoot! We stuck our weapons right in front of these guys’ noses. I don’t know how good my pronunciation was. Zaman da amruno paerawi wukra! Follow our orders or get shot!”
Looking at me, Sylvia said, “They got the message.”
“I let go a couple of bursts right over their heads,” Brinkman said. “That helped. They started backing off. When they saw how the rounds chewed up the wall, they began to quiet down.”
“Doug makes it sound easy,” Sylvia said. “He risked his life doing that.”
Brinkman shrugged. “It took a while, but we were finally able to herd them all back inside.”
“He was awarded the DSC,” Sylvia said quietly.
“Right after we got things settled down, we called for reinforcements. It was around that time that Ursula Vogt showed up. She identified herself as a correspondent for a Kraut newspaper. Said she wanted to talk with me about what happened. I gave her the whole story right from the beginning.” He paused, looked at Sylvia. “After that, one thing led to another.”
“She began chasing you around,” Sylvia said.
“I should have known better, should have known it was too good to be true, having this good-looking dame showing up all the time. When I was back in Kabul, she turned up there, and we got to know one another a little better. Then she went back home. That was January 2004.”
Brinkman looked at Sylvia as though getting permission to tell the rest of the story.
“Anyway, I was reassigned to Bragg, but Ursula and I stayed in contact, mostly through e-mail. A year later, our outfit deployed again. Then Ursula showed up again.”
“Only now she was with Welt-Bericht,” Sylvia said. “Working for Kurt Mehling. And she started taping all your conversations.”
Brinkman grimaced. “She called them interviews.”
I recalled the X-rated tapes Sylvia had played for my benefit at the apartment. Brinkman and Ursula Vogt had seen quite a bit of one another.
Sylvia said, “What she was looking for was admissions that we’d violated the Geneva Convention.”
“Hell, what she was looking for was admissions that we’d used sarin gas up in the mountains.”
I perked up when I heard that. Sarin is a particularly deadly nerve gas. I knew there had been some talk of Saddam Hussein possessing sarin—and that he’d used it to put down a rebellion of his own people in the years following the First Gulf War.
Sylvia looked at me. “Ursula Vogt wanted to know if we were using sarin gas in Afghanistan.”
When Brinkman nodded, I said, “What did you say?”
“At first I wasn’t paying that much attention. I didn’t say the right thing. I said I knew we had sarin stockpiled somewhere, but I wasn’t sure where. I never said we used it. She asked if we’d brought any of it to Afghanistan. I said I didn’t know. She talked constantly about sarin gas. After a time I became suspicious, and finally I tumbled to what she was after.”
Sylvia said,
“It was Mehling who put her up to asking these questions.”
I could visualize the situation readily enough. Kurt Mehling had baited the trap with an attractive woman. Probably most of the quotes Ursula Vogt had gotten from Brinkman were pillow talk—comments that Brinkman had made in an unguarded moment. But even a handful of taped quotes could become dynamite on the printed page and in another context—and particularly if they could be attributed to a decorated officer in America’s elite Special Forces. This wasn’t the first time that a reporter had taken advantage of an unwitting member of the military in order to land a story, and almost certainly wouldn’t be the last.
“Anyway, I knew I had to report what had been going on. It went up the line and eventually all the way back to D.C.”
“I was assigned to come over and determine what had happened,” Sylvia said. “After speaking with Major Brinkman, I decided to have him stay close to the Vogt woman. After that, he was working for us, trying to find out what he could about Kurt Mehling.”
I said, “But they didn’t print the story back then. Why not?”
After Brinkman and Sylvia exchanged glances, Sylvia said, “That was because of Ursula Vogt. Although some people might question her methods, she was an honest reporter. Mehling had hired her away from one of the big newspapers where she’d built her reputation. She was talking to other people and began to doubt whether the United States had really used sarin after all. She told Doug she felt there was something fishy in the way the magazine had insisted she write that story. By the time she was back in Munich, she no longer believed it had really happened.”
I said, “That’s why they killed her.”
“She was ready to go public with what she knew and what she thought. You brought back her complete story, Alex. It was on one of the discs. She wrote a long article describing a conspiracy to make it appear the United States had used sarin gas.
“They moved quickly. Nadaj sent Quemal to kill the Vogt woman. Although Quemal was a logical suspect, Mehling fixed the investigation, right down to pressuring the homicide cops who were assigned to the case. They were told to concentrate the investigation on Major Brinkman.”
The pieces were falling into place. When I spoke with Max shortly after arriving in Munich, he’d been wary of the case, almost as if he’d smelled a rat. And Max would have been doubly careful if he’d thought the case reflected badly on the Munich cops. Even Thiemann, Ursula Vogt’s neighbor, said he thought Quemal might have been the murderer. It was an effective job of framing an innocent man—and I could now see why Sylvia was so eager to get Brinkman out of prison.
Considering that she’d personally assigned him to stay close to Ursula Vogt, Sylvia was largely responsible for Brinkman. No wonder she pulled out all the stops to break him out of prison. Mehling was worried about what Brinkman might say if the case went to trial. But with Ursula Vogt and Brinkman both dead, Mehling could have run the sarin gas story in Welt-Bericht—and safely speculated that Brinkman had killed Ursula Vogt as part of a cover-up by the American government.
Who knows what else they could have written.
On the S-Bahn riding back to Munich, I realized that there was a piece of the puzzle still missing, something that Sylvia still hadn’t told me. She hadn’t said why it was still important for us to get our hands on Ramush Nadaj. And another question was: Why did Ursula Vogt honestly believe the United States had used sarin gas if we never had?
Something had happened back in Afghanistan that might provide the answer to both those questions. Sylvia’s revelations confirmed some things I’d already suspected. But I hadn’t known anything about sarin gas.
When I arrived back in the apartment, I found a text message on my cell phone: Will arrive Munich in two days. Buck.
Even though I was tired, I lay awake for most of the night, probably because I couldn’t get these new revelations out of my mind. Buck had planned to talk with the senator on the Intelligence Committee, and as I tossed and turned, I wondered if he might have found out anything about sarin gas.
I was still awake when, early the next morning, the first rays of sunshine peeped through a crack in the curtains.
Chapter 28
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
While I was drinking a second cup of coffee, I called Sylvia’s cell phone and left a message. I figured Brinkman would be flying out of Ramstein Air Base, but using a military installation to aid an escaped prisoner would make the German government very unhappy—and would probably be the cause of a flurry of notes and protests flying back and forth across the Atlantic. It would be Sylvia’s job to make sure that the German government remained none the wiser.
With Sylvia and Brinkman using the car, I decided I’d be needing wheels, and rented a black Mercedes E350 from one of the downtown agencies. But while I was on the highway that circles the city, I became aware of a blue Audi on my tail and as I went by the Olympic Stadium I speeded up, and he speeded up. When I changed lanes, he changed lanes. Whoever it was, he didn’t seem concerned by the fact that I’d made him, but continued to maintain enough distance to keep me from seeing who he was. I got off the Ring and turned into Schwabing, Munich’s answer to Greenwich Village. When I glanced into the mirror, I saw the Audi had reappeared, and was proceeding slowly up the narrow street.
I found a parking space twenty yards from the corner. Although the Audi went by slowly and halted a few yards beyond where I’d parked, I still couldn’t get a look at the driver. I exited my car and strolled across the sidewalk to a shop window. I used the reflection to watch the other driver as he backed into an empty space. When he climbed out, I recognized Detective Paul Schneider.
I should have known. Only a cop would tail someone so obviously. I supposed the idea was to make me nervous.
Even wearing a black leather jacket and brown corduroy pants, Schneider looked like a policeman, largely from the way he walked, or swaggered—with an attitude and as if he owned the street. He waved, then with his hands in both jacket pockets and a friendly smile on his face, he came strolling up the sidewalk in my direction. As it happened, the store window I was staring into was a woman’s boutique, a detail that struck him as funny.
He pointed to a dress on one of the manikins. “I think you’d look good in blue. I wonder if they have it in your size.”
I said, “In the States that’s a remark that even a cop couldn’t get away with.”
“What you people over there need is more law and order. More respect for people in authority.”
“How would you know?” I said.
“I spent my vacation in the States a couple of years ago—rented a motorcycle, biked around for three weeks. Enjoyed it.”
He nodded in the direction of a small café on the corner. “C’mon. You feel like a cup of coffee? I’m buying.”
Inside the café were mostly middle-aged women, all seemingly talking at once. I found a table in the rear next to the big glass window. Across the street a shapely blonde emerged from a beauty salon. As I watched, she strolled up the sidewalk.
“Not a hair out of place,” Schneider said grinning, as he placed two cups of coffee, two crullers, and a handful of napkins on the table. As he eased himself down on the chair, I realized how big he was. No question that he was a serious iron pumper.
Without preamble, he said, “You’re good, Klear. Real good. And I mean that.”
I took a sip of coffee. “Good at what?” The remark sounded mildly ominous. I knew Schneider hadn’t arranged this meeting just to pay me compliments.
“Let me explain. It goes back to this murder case Detective Nessler caught. The dead Albanian in that warehouse? First, you let on to me and my partner that you’ve got some kind of interest in this Quemal individual because he was down in Kosovo, but you also knew that he had spent time in Afghanistan. At the same time you tell us you’re here in Munich as a tourist.”
“Anything wrong with that?”
“Only that we wondered why a tourist wo
uld know anything about some character from Kosovo. Kosovo? Afghanistan? I mean, what’s the connection? Of course with an American passport you’re permitted to spend up to three months in the Federal Republic without a visa. No problem there. You haven’t committed any crimes. But naturally, my partner and I had to wonder about your interest. And to be honest, Detective Nessler and I are still wondering.”
I nodded. “Sure. But I was also very up front about the fact I once worked over here.”
“That’s true. From what I understand, you worked for the American government’s radio station in the English Garden.”
“You’re well informed.”
He shook his head. “Not really. I only know that because Max Peters mentioned it. Max was the police liaison with you guys for a long time.”
“Max was good at it too. He always knew how to smooth over the rough waters and keep everyone happy.”
“Max was a good cop. But that radio operation was a cover for spies and intelligence people. Everyone knows that. Not to mention all the East bloc exiles you people had working for you. Malcontents and pests, mostly. Anyway, Detective Nessler and I were willing to cut you a little slack there. And we appreciated your information that this Quemal might have had something to do with the murder at the Albanian club.”
“I was trying to help.”
“Like I say, we appreciated that. I think everyone in law enforcement agrees that we should all share information and work together. Particularly these days with all this international terrorism. Right?”
“I’m not with intelligence anymore.” I took another sip of coffee.
“Oh right, I forgot.” He smiled. “But then, Klear, something extraordinary happened.”
“What was that?”
“This Quemal, the very person you mentioned. He turns up dead, murdered by person or persons unknown.”
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