They both knew why I was there.
“Shouldn’t you be on your way, Klear?” Shenlee said, looking at his watch.
“The van’s outside, Jerry. My flight’s not for another two hours.” I looked at Sylvia. “I’m wondering if someone in the government might want to tell the German cops that I was on duty when I shot Quemal. It would help.”
Shenlee uttered a sigh, an unmistakable sign that he thought my request was an unreasonable one. “Listen, Klear. No one ordered you to shoot him.”
“It was self-defense. He had a knife at my throat.”
“Experienced special ops people don’t let those things happen. They don’t get into those situations. And they don’t go around shooting citizens inside the borders of friendly countries. You know that.”
“You mean I should have tried reasoning with him?”
“You should have turned that information over to the German police, Alex.” Before I could respond, Sylvia said, “He was one of the KLA people who’d held you prisoner down here, wasn’t he?”
“You know he was, Sylvia.”
Shenlee grunted. “I can believe you had a beef against him, Klear. But the Krauts don’t take kindly to people who take the law into their own hands. You can’t blame them for that. We don’t either.”
“That’s right, Alex,” Sylvia said. “The Germans would maintain that you were settling a personal score, and they’d be right.”
“At least you were able to resist shooting Nadaj,” Shenlee said.
“Tell the authorities what happened, Alex. I’ve already indicated that’s what you should do.”
“You were there, Sylvia. You could say what happened.”
“Listen, Klear. You may think we’re being unreasonable, but we’re not. The Krauts are difficult to deal with. Forget the diplomacy. There’s a lot of tension these days between them and us. Just to give you an example: The Hamburg cops arrested a couple of terrorists last year some time, a gang with all kinds of explosives and plans to blow up an American base. Then they decided to drop the charges, so we asked them to extradite these characters. The Krauts wouldn’t do it. The minute these terrorists were out of jail, what do you think happened?”
“They disappeared.”
“Right. With a little more cooperation, we’d have them out of circulation by now, which would mean one less headache for us.”
Sylvia nodded. “Jerry’s right, Alex. There’s nothing we can do for you. You clearly overstepped your authority in that instance. We’d help if we could.”
“I’m sure.” I don’t think I was able to keep the disgust out of my voice. Colonel Bitch-on-Wheels was acting true to form.
Outside, I found the van with Buck behind the wheel. From the way he looked at me, I could see he sensed how depressed I felt.
When he asked about the meeting, I said, “They say they can’t do anything. Shenlee says the Germans don’t like the idea of people taking the law into their own hands.”
“That’s not exactly news. Doesn’t he feel some responsibility? After all, he and the colonel are the ones who organized the operation. I’m sure they’ll be happy to take the credit.”
I said, “You and I think differently from the way they do.” I resisted the urge to say “Colonel Bitch,” but I had an idea Buck knew what I was thinking.
“You always said we got into the wrong end of the business.” Buck turned over the engine and slammed the vehicle into gear. He wasn’t happy either. As we went by the PX and gymnasium and navigated the hilly road leading toward the main gate, Buck said quietly, “Shenlee indicated that they want me to fly back to the States. But I could fly back to Munich with you and see what goes.”
I thought about that for a moment. It would be nice to have Buck around. Finally, I said, “It might be wiser to do what Shenlee says. There’s no sense getting him mad at you. There’s always the telephone. I’ll keep you posted.”
Buck nodded. We’d both been a part of the small world that military and government operatives inhabit long enough to know that it didn’t make sense to antagonize the wrong people. I’d be on my own in Germany.
Although I said something about things working out right in the end, I’m not sure either Buck or I really believed they would. At some point in life, everyone’s luck runs out. Considering the number of times I’d gone through the Wall and into the East during the Cold War, not to mention some of the crazy stuff I’d done when I was over there, I had to concede that the law of averages probably should have caught up with me a lot sooner. It had caught up with me finally—as it eventually catches up with everyone. I don’t know if I ever felt so depressed, mostly because I never thought things would end like this.
But the truth is, I’ve known of any number of dedicated intelligence people, guys and gals who’d had great careers, for whom things ended badly. In some respects, I guess, it’s the nature of the business. If it is, it shouldn’t be.
Buck hung around at the military terminal, drinking vending-machine coffee with me until they called my flight. He and I shook hands at the gate. For all either of us knew, the next time I saw him might be on visitors’ day in a German jail. Then, together with a couple of dozen GIs and a handful of civilians, I began walking out to where a C-130, gassed up and ready to fly, was sitting on the tarmac.
A half hour later, we were airborne and headed back to Ramstein Air Base.
Chapter 40
Friday, February 15, 2008
It was already after 1900 by the time we touched down. A couple of GIs gave me a ride from the main Ramstein terminal to the parking area, and I set off on the trip back to Munich at about 1930. I had been away for three days, and I couldn’t help wondering whether the cops had tumbled to the fact I was gone.
I assumed that they had, but I told myself I would deal with that particular bridge when it was time to cross it. In any case, I wouldn’t be advertising where I’d been. One obvious difference between Germany and Kosovo is the roads—in Germany they may be the world’s best, in Kosovo they are among the world’s worst. I enjoy driving fast, and for most of the trip, I was in the passing lane with the Mercedes speedometer at well over eighty.
During the time I was in Kosovo I hadn’t had time to think about anything beyond finding Ramush Nadaj. I had to confess to feeling some satisfaction knowing that I’d finally managed to accomplish the two objectives that I’d signed on for—nailing Nadaj and springing Brinkman. And Kurt Mehling would have to scrap whatever plans he had for publishing reports of the United States employing sarin gas in eastern Afghanistan, and thereby setting the stage for a nuclear attack on the United States. But in carrying out these two assignments, I’d gotten some people very mad at me.
The Munich cops, naturally enough, were eager to jail the individual who had shot someone in their fair city.
And then there was Kurt Mehling.
I’d brought his involvement with the murder of Ursula Vogt to the attention of the Munich police. He wouldn’t like that. When I recalled that Mehling had offered me a job in his organization, I had to laugh. I figured that all he wanted to do was get me into some private place and squeeze as much information out of me as he could. After that, he’d remove me from circulation permanently.
The last stretch of the A-8 autobahn took me past the city of Augsburg, which is about fifty miles west of Munich. It was now well after midnight, close to the end of a long day. I fought the urge to close my eyes and relax as I drove since, at over eighty miles per hour, you don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel. All I could think of was getting back to the place and hitting the sack. Tomorrow I’d try to speak with someone, either to Max or to Irmie, and go on from there.
There had to be a way out of this mess. If there wasn’t, I was going to be out of circulation for a long time.
Feeling very tired, I reached the traffic circle on the outskirts of Munich, turned into the Menzingerstrasse, which was empty of traffic. At Romanplatz, I hung a right, rode down two blocks and hun
g another right. It was after midnight, and mine was the only car on the street. I found a parking space a block away from the building, climbed out, locked up the vehicle, and hauled my carry-on out of the trunk. As I started up the sidewalk, I saw a moving shadow.
My alarm bells went off. If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have anticipated something like this.
Someone was behind me. Six feet in front of me I saw another large shadow, this one blocking the sidewalk.
The individual behind me came up fast, but I was already moving and received only a glancing blow against the back of my neck. Not wanting to give them a target, I kept moving. I swung my carry-on, caught the one behind me squarely in the side of the head, heard him mumble what sounded like an Albanian curse. When the other guy swung, he sent me reeling, and I wound up sprawled against a parked car. As they moved in, I broke off the automobile’s antenna, jabbed it at the silhouette’s face, heard him cry out. With one hand over his eye, he hesitated and yelled something at his partner. I continued to slash with the antenna, but now there was a third guy on the scene. Moving in quickly, I swung at the newcomer with my left. I staggered him, but that was all.
The first two attackers I handled well enough. One was disabled and the other half disabled, but the third guy caught me off balance. He hit me with something, probably some kind of blackjack. Feeling dazed and with my eyes smarting, I was able to deflect a couple of the punches he aimed at my head. But then he caught me solidly against my ear.
I heard a loud ringing, then felt them grabbing my arms. Doing my best to fight them off, I told myself not to let this happen.
As I struggled, I felt myself being shoved and dragged. They were trying to get me into the rear seat of a car they had parked at the curb. I knew I didn’t want to go in there, and when I got my arm loose, I clobbered someone’s face. But three was too many, and after a minute they finally pushed me onto the backseat. With the rear door still open, one of them jumped in, slammed the car in gear—but it lurched, then stalled. He got the engine going again, backed up, banged against the car behind us. His two partners were holding me down on the rear seat, and one of them produced a roll of duct tape.
The car was out in traffic, but the rear door was still open, banging back and forth.
As his partner held my arms, the one with a hand over his eye reached out to slam the door closed. I tried to shove him out, but he was able to grab the doorframe. Then, using his free hand, he managed to get some duct tape around my wrists. As the other guy held me, he continued to wind the tape. When he was finished, he pointed to his eye. Although I don’t understand much Albanian, I knew he was very angry.
As we drove onto the Ring, I felt my head throbbing. My left hand hurt like blazes. As we drove, they talked among themselves. They didn’t seem to care that I could hear what they were saying and see where we were going.
I took that as a bad sign.
Then we were on the Leopoldstrasse, and when we turned off, I knew we were headed for the Kalashni Klub. We drove on to the gravel parking lot and with a screech of brakes halted behind the building. They hustled me out of the car, through a door, and tumbled me down some narrow steps. One of them dragged me to my feet, opened the door to a large basement room, and the guy with the hand over his eye pulled me inside. I went in stumbling, lost my balance, and ended up sprawled on the floor. Standing over me, he screeched something in Albanian. I don’t think he was saying “Welcome back to Munich.”
“Alex, my dear fellow.” Kurt Mehling had a pained expression on his elegant, unlined face. “You don’t look good.” He sighed, dusted a speck of dust from his jacket sleeve. “None of this had to happen, you know. If only you’d listened—”
Wearing a gray ski jacket and a pair of jeans, Mehling had entered the room a few minutes before. I had an idea he’d been awakened from a sound sleep and had dressed hurriedly. I figured the time for around 0400 hours. After a brief conversation with two of his goons, Mehling turned his attention to me. I was seated at the table, my hands taped together and my legs taped so tightly to the chair they ached from lack of circulation. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Mehling dropped onto the chair opposite me, sighed again, leaned his arms on the table. “I’m sorry, Alex,” he said quietly. “I really am. I had an idea that you and I could work well together.” He paused. “Obviously, you had other plans.”
“You can’t get away with this,” I said, giving my voice an authority I didn’t feel. “You can’t kill me and think the police won’t find out.” But the truth was, I didn’t see why he couldn’t.
He smiled indulgently, probably realizing I had to say something along those lines.
“I can forgive a lot of things. Believe me, I really can. But what you did—” His voice broke off.
“Untie me, Kurt. Then we can talk better.”
Sighing, he said. “I like you, Alex. I really do. You’re saucy and funny, and I like that. You’re so typically American. I wondered whether you would accept my generous offer. I hoped you would. Really. I sensed you were suspicious of me, but you shouldn’t have been. I think we could have made a good team.”
He lit a cigarette. “What you did, Alex, was really hurtful to me. As I say, it amounted to a betrayal. You returned my kindness with unkindness. Extraordinary unkindness.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, let me explain it just to eliminate all possibility of misunderstanding—and so that you understand why you are going to have to be—what’s the word you people use? Terminated? Treacherous people need to be terminated. In order to make the world a better place. And you, Alex, are a treacherous person.”
“You’re not making sense. Untie me.”
“You remember that at our meeting I offered you a job where you would have every opportunity to utilize your skills and at the same time be well paid.”
“Of course I remember.”
Mehling removed an object from his jacket pocket. It was my Beretta. Fixing me with a hostile stare, he pointed it at me. “Bang, bang, Alex, you’re dead.” He lowered the weapon, smiled, obviously amused at his little joke. “You’re not dead yet? Soon, Alex, soon.” Then, looking at the weapon, he said, “I think it’s poetic justice that you should be killed with your own gun.”
Although I sat perfectly still, I could feel beads of perspiration on my forehead.
“Do you know how I came into possession of this?” When I only stared, he said, “Would you believe that on the very next day, the day following our little talk, I was personally summoned to police headquarters and that my car was impounded? Well, it’s true. But I am a most cautious person, and I had already made a thorough examination of the vehicle, from top to bottom. One of the two gentlemen who aided me found this. It was under the passenger seat.”
After a brief pause, he said, “That was not nice.” Mehling placed the weapon in his jacket, then zipped up the pocket. “If I hadn’t taken the trouble to go over the car, I might have had some difficulty explaining to the police the presence of this weapon in my automobile. Why aren’t you saying anything, Alex? Has the cat got your tongue?”
My scheme hadn’t worked after all. Looking back, I suppose it wasn’t all that brilliant. Max, Irmie, and Buck had all suggested as much. I hoped Irmie hadn’t said anything to make Schneider suspicious. I hated to think how I’d involved her in all this.
“I would have expected more from you. Really, did you think I was so careless that I wouldn’t look over the car after our conversation? Then the detectives wanted to know where I was on the evening that a murder took place out here.” Mehling sighed.
“Where were you?”
“I had the foresight to bribe my mechanic. He provided an airtight alibi. He said my car was in the shop for repairs for two days. It required only a phone call for the police to determine that it couldn’t possibly have been at the K Klub on the evening of the murder.”
At that moment the door opened and Vickie,
wearing a pink cashmere sweater and brown slacks, stepped into the room. She looked very different from the way she had looked in Kosovo, when she was dressed in loose-fitting black cammies.
I wondered whether she mightn’t be working her magic on Mehling. Her sweater was tight and emphasized her breasts. As they spoke, keeping their voices low, Mehling placed his hand on her arm. I sensed they were talking about me. I seemed to be on everyone’s mind all of a sudden.
Vickie left, and Mehling said, “The whole thing was embarrassing for the detectives, Alex. They kept offering explanations for why they’d called me. Except for one female detective, they were all extremely apologetic. They even played a tape of a telephone message on which some drunk said he’d seen someone being shot in a vehicle. It was so ridiculous—”
“Untie me, Kurt.”
Mehling squashed out his cigarette and shook his head. “As I say, this detective, a blonde woman, kept asking unpleasant questions. Making herself obnoxious.”
That would have been Irmie.
“After a time, my patience really wore thin. I have a certain amount of influence with the police authorities. I promise you that this female detective, whoever she is, won’t be with the police force much longer. And one day she’ll just disappear. I’ll see to that.”
When I didn’t say anything, Mehling shrugged. “Balkan gangsters, men like Igor, can be very effective.”
“Effective at what?”
“At instilling discipline, Alex. To start with, a sedative to make the woman drowsy. After she’s been raped fifteen or twenty times, she has little choice but to become cooperative, wouldn’t you agree? Provide some cocaine from time to time, and rape her until she’s crying for the drug and telling you she’ll do anything for another high. When Igor puts them to work, they’ll oblige even the most revolting men.” He smiled. “Anything to keep her pimp happy.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d spent enough time in the Balkans investigating these types of operations to know how they worked. Max had hinted that Mehling’s influence extended in every direction. One thing I knew: the trafficking of drugs and women can only exist in countries where the authorities look the other way, and to me it looked as if the countries of Europe, like some of the countries of the Far East, were permitting the traffickers to have free rein.
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