by Brad Thor
“That’s what you think,” said Scot as he pulled a piece of paper from his inside pocket, completely revealing the gun this time, and pretending to read from it, “Have you ever heard of Tommy the Torch also known as Top Shelf Tommy?”
“No, I have not.”
“How about, Patrick the Ace?”
“Once again, no.”
“Jeff the Matchmaker?”
“Herr Boa, these names sound more like they come from an American gangster movie,” said Schepp, whose upper lip was beading with sweat.
“They might sound funny to you, but my government takes them very seriously.” They actually sounded funny to Harvath too. Sometimes his ad-libs were spectacular, and sometimes his warped sense of humor got the better of him. Harvath had always been the type of person who would laugh in church and, knowing he was not supposed to, couldn’t help laughing harder.
Claudia saw the need to draw the interrogation back into the realm of not only respectability but believability and took back control. “Herr Schepp, each of these men have mentioned you when questioned in South Africa. They work at a rather exclusive winery that, among other things, has been violating international customs regulations with their shipments. Is any of this sounding familiar?”
“Well, we do have several South African wines in our cellar, but we purchase those through a Swiss distributor.”
“No, these men specifically stated that the wine was delivered here to the hotel in the name of a certain individual.” Turning to Harvath, she said, “Mr. Boa, do you have the name on your notes there?”
“Yes, the name is Gerhard Miner. Ring any bells, Schepp?”
“Yes, I do know Herr Miner. He is a regular customer. We keep a case of dessert wine for him, Vin de Constance. Has the hotel done something wrong?”
“That depends,” said Claudia. “Why does the winery name you as their contact in Switzerland?”
“I would imagine because the wine was shipped here for Herr Miner, but to my attention. Had I known the transaction was illegal, I would have politely refused Herr Miner’s request.”
“Ignorance of the law, Mr. Schepp, is no excuse. This could reflect quite poorly on the hotel and your career,” said Harvath.
“Herr Schepp,” said Claudia, easing comfortably into the good cop role, “I think your participation in this affair can be minimized, if not forgotten, if you would be willing to offer us a few moments of cooperation.”
The man was definitely eager, and his head nodded up and down so quickly that Claudia was afraid it would snap right off his neck.
“Now, you state that you only received the wine. You didn’t order it?”
“Yes, that is correct. From what Herr Miner explained, a friend of his arranged it as a gift. It is extremely difficult to get. The estate only sells this wine in a limited quantity.”
“Herr Schepp, we would need something to corroborate your story. A receipt, a bill of lading. Do you have any paperwork that came with the wine?”
“I have a file for Herr Miner,” said Schepp as he moved from behind his desk to a row of file cabinets. “Sometimes the wineries will include special handling or storage directions with the shipments. I always keep all of this information together.”
Claudia looked over at Scot, who rolled his eyes.
It took Schepp no time at all to find what he was looking for. “Here it is. This is the shipping and order information that came with the delivery. I don’t know if this would be helpful for you, but some tasting notes and a small promotional piece about the wine was included as well.”
Schepp showed Claudia and Scot the paperwork.
“Herr Schepp,” said Claudia, “this may prove to be very helpful. We will need to take this with us, but you are free to make a copy of it if you like, to retain for your records.”
“That is very kind of you. I would hate for my records to be inaccurate. I don’t need the promotional piece, but the other things I should copy. The machine is at the front desk. Do you mind waiting a moment while I make the copies? I’ll do it very quickly.”
“Very well, Herr Schepp. We appreciate your cooperation.”
In a flash, the man was out the door, and Scot was half scanning, half reading the promotional piece out loud. “‘In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Vin de Constance was the most celebrated wine to come out of the southern hemisphere…. Napoleon Bonaparte had thirty bottles a month shipped to the island of Elba to ease his confinement….’ It seems the king of Prussia used to knock back a few glasses every night after dinner, as did Louis XVI, Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and a busload of Russian czars.”
“Now I know why Miner’s lecture to me about the wine seemed so knowledgeable; he memorized the tasting notes,” said Claudia.
“Wait a second,” said Scot.
“What?” she asked, drawing closer to try and read over his shoulder. “What is it?”
“In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austin apparently recommended Vin de Constance as a cure for a broken heart.”
“So?”
“Guess who else wrote about it? Charles Dickens in Edwin Drood.”
“Dear Aunt Jane; Yours, Edwin,” said Claudia. “The code between Miner and Senator Snyder.”
“Bingo!”
When Schepp reappeared, Claudia accepted the originals of the documents and told him that if he didn’t hear from either her or Herr Boa again, it would mean they had decided to let him off the hook. They thanked him and quickly left the hotel.
68
“When they come out, kill them both! And this time, no mistakes,” commanded Miner over the radio once he was in his car and had driven away from the hotel.
Klaus Dryer and Anton Schebel were both waiting outside the Hotel des Balances for Scot and Claudia to appear. Klaus carried a nine-millimeter Walther P4 pistol with a sound suppresser, and Schebel carried his favorite H&K MP5 SD1 submachine gun, which was also silenced. Both weapons were compact and easily hidden beneath a jacket. Schebel and Dryer made a decidedly deadly duo.
Miner had indicated to his men that the wait might be at least an hour, as he had purchased a last meal for the condemned couple. The shooters were taken by surprise when Claudia and Scot exited the hotel less than twenty minutes later. They turned right and walked along a narrow, relatively deserted passageway that hugged the hotel’s service entrance. Scot had thought it best to leave Claudia’s car in the parking lot by the Matthäuskirche and walk the five minutes to their rendezvous with Miner.
The passageway turned to the right, and as they began to follow it, a hail of sharp plaster rained down on top of them while a small utility window in the building in front of them shattered in an explosion of glass.
“Move!” yelled Scot, grabbing Claudia’s arm.
The shots came from behind, and instinctively, Scot steered them in the opposite direction. When he came to the Rathausquai, the pedestrianized area bordering the Reuss River, Harvath pulled up and looked around the corner before pulling Claudia out with him. They ran as far as the Hotel Schiff and then ducked into its old stone colonnade.
“Who’s after us?” Claudia demanded while she panted for air.
“I’ll give you two guesses. Either it’s the American hit team or Miner’s men. My money’s on Miner’s guys, but they’re both equally capable. I don’t want to wait to find out. Let’s keep moving, shall we?”
They walked quickly forward, and Scot glanced behind him to see if he could spot the shooter or shooters.
“Claudia, look behind us. See the two women with the baby carriages? To their left is a tall guy in a long, dark coat. That’s our man.”
Another quick tug on her arm and Claudia turned back around and moved faster. They were out of the colonnade and getting ready to cross the bridge when a series of spits came from uphill to their left. Scot whirled and pulled his Beretta. A man dressed in a blue ski parka was making his way toward them from the direction of the Kornmarkt. He melded into a group of people and preven
ted Scot from getting a clean shot.
“There’s a second one! Run!” he said to Claudia, and the two of them took off down the quay.
They ran past the Rathaus, the Zum Weissen Kreuz, the Pickwick, the Hotel des Alpes, and at St.-Peters-Kirche, steered a hard right and ran up the creaky stairs of the covered wooden bridge known as the Kapellbrücke. Scot looked over his right shoulder as they ran across the bridge and saw Blue Coat coming down the quay. The man in the long coat was nowhere to be seen, but Scot knew he couldn’t be too far behind.
The man in the blue coat looked around and quickly drew the pistol from his parka. The suppresser looked as if it was a foot long.
Reflexively, Scot pushed his hand down hard on Claudia’s head while yelling, “Gun! Get down! Get down!”
Claudia dropped to her stomach on the damp wood. Because the side of the bridge was about three feet high, they were now completely hidden from view, but they were far from safe. Scot yelled, “Keep your head down and move!” just as splinters of wood began flying, only inches behind them. The man in the blue coat had seen where they’d ducked and was firing blindly into the sides of the bridge, hoping to get lucky. Had the man been using a machine gun, he could have cut a much wider swath. Harvath had caught one break; he didn’t expect to catch another.
It was only a matter of moments before the man in the blue coat would be on the bridge, closing in on them from behind. Scot urged Claudia on, and the two ran as fast as they could, crouched beneath the shield of the bridge’s outer wooden wall.
Halfway across the river, the bridge edged to the left. They had put enough distance between them and the man behind. What they needed now was speed to increase the gap. Scot stood up, and Claudia did the same. They were both breathing heavily, yet they pressed on, their feet thumping along the wooden planks as they raced for the other bank.
When they drew alongside a small series of gift shops and the bridge’s tower, Scot’s heart seized. Coming around a bend from the other direction, the direction of their hoped escape, was Long Coat. Harvath saw him pull out a piece of weaponry he knew very well, an H&K MP5.
“Shooter at eleven o’clock! Down! Down!” yelled Scot. Both he and Claudia literally hit the deck. Startled shopkeepers had no idea what was happening until they saw the pair draw their weapons. Scot’s was first out, and he let loose with a booming volley of three rounds.
Long Coat disappeared somewhere where Scot couldn’t see him.
“Check our six!” he now yelled to Claudia.
“Six?”
“Behind us! Six o’clock. Check for the man with the pistol!”
Claudia spun just in time to see the man in the blue coat coming around the turn in the bridge. She fired four shots from her nine-millimeter SIG-Sauer P220, which sent the man running back in the direction he had come.
“Are you okay?” Scot asked.
“Yes. He took off, but I don’t know for how long.”
“I don’t know either. I think they thought they’d surprise us. I doubt they were expecting such a fight. They’re probably in radio contact, so it won’t take them long to regroup and come back.”
“If they’re going to, they’ll have to do it soon. The police will be here any minute.”
“Yell to the shopkeepers in German and ask if we can get out through the tower.”
Claudia did, and then responded to Scot. “No, the only way out is by either end of the bridge.”
“Can you see the man in the blue coat from where you are?”
“No, I can’t. Do you see the other man?”
“I don’t see him, but they’re close.”
The roof of the Kapellbrücke was a series of posts and rafters covered with wooden shingles. He wasn’t going to win any awards from the Lucerne Historical Society, but he didn’t care.
What I wouldn’t give for a nice sawed-off shotgun right about now, thought Harvath. Rolling onto his back, Scot raised his pistol and aimed at the roof, trying to avoid the overhanging paintings the bridge was famous for. He squeezed off five rounds. Half of his magazine was now empty.
The bullets ripped through the brittle wood shingles, filling the moist air with dust and exposing small bits of sky. The pigeons and white seagulls that had remained on the roof were now flapping their wings as hard as they could to get away.
Scot and Claudia had the slight advantage of being in a crook in the bridge where neither of the shooters could see them very well.
“When I count to three, I want you to hop up on the sidewall there and hoist yourself into the rafters toward where I shot those holes in the roof. It shouldn’t be too hard to peel those shingles away. Start making a bigger opening the minute you get up there. I’ll cover you.”
Claudia squinted up. “Okay, I understand,” she said.
“Do you have an extra clip of ammunition?”
“No, I don’t. Had I known I would be doing so much shooting when I left my house on Saturday, I would have stolen a crate of bullets to go with those missiles in my parents’ barn.”
“Very funny. We need to conserve our ammunition. If you see the man in the blue coat, I only want you to take two shots at him, no more. Do you understand?”
“Two shots. I’ve got it. Ready when you are.”
Scot rolled back onto his stomach, facing where he had last seen Long Coat coming up the stairs. There was still no sign of him. He took a deep breath and then began, “One…two…three!” He swept his pistol from side to side expecting Long Coat to show his face, but there was nothing. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw that Claudia was already hoisting herself up onto the lower rafter.
He knew she could no longer be his eyes for the man in the blue parka, so he rolled sideways against the wall and looked behind him. While the bend in the bridge was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage. Without standing up, he couldn’t tell how close or how far away either of the shooters might be. Above, Claudia was beginning to tear at the latticework, pulling away loose shingles and opening a wider hole.
With his back against the wall, Scot ejected the magazine from his Beretta partway and verified how many shots he had left. Slowly, he slid himself over to the place where Claudia had been. He pulled the slide back just a fraction to make sure there was a round chambered and got ready to make his move. Glancing overhead, Scot saw that Claudia had opened the hole wide enough and was now beginning to wiggle through. It was his turn.
Using the wall to support his weight, he pushed himself upward. His head was almost at the level where it could be seen. In the distance, he heard the braying of European police sirens. Time was running out, and the shooters would be emboldened to make one final push. Scot was sure of it, because that’s exactly what he would do. He took a couple of deep breaths and raised the Beretta.
He fired in quick succession; two shots toward where he’d last seen Long Coat and in the direction of the man in the blue parka. Tucking the pistol into his waistband, Harvath vaulted onto the edge of the wall and prepared to grab hold of the rafter when muffled spits started coming at him from both directions. Long Coat and Blue Coat were returning fire.
From their positions, they hadn’t been able to see him when he was on the bridge floor, but now that he was standing on the wall, he was completely exposed. A bullet missed his forehead by a whisper and crashed into the rafter he was reaching for. Without thinking, Scot jerked his hand away and, before he could steady himself, lost his balance and began to fall backward.
If he landed on one of the pilings below, he knew the result would be fatal, so he used his powerful leg muscles to give himself one big push outward. Sailing over the water, he saw the look of horror on Claudia’s face as she stood on the sloped roof of the Kapellbrücke. Pulling his knees into his chest like a child cannonballing into a swimming pool, Harvath braced himself for impact.
69
The shock of the frigid water stunned him into immobility as the swift current grabbed him and rapidly pulled him beneath the br
idge.
After the first few seconds, his body’s natural instinct was to struggle to the surface, but Harvath fought it. He needed to stay as deep as possible. The men on the bridge would be waiting for him to appear on the other side, their side, where they would begin firing.
As he looked up, Scot could see on the surface of the water the shadow where the bridge ended and open sky began. Just as he suspected, as soon as he was out from beneath the bridge, the men started shooting.
He heard the ploonk, ploonk, ploonk of bullets hitting the water all around him. He saw the rippled air-bubble tunnels as the shots drilled their way toward him from above. He swept water past him with his arms in a desperate attempt to get closer to the bottom. Suddenly, the bullets stopped, but there was no time to try and figure out why. The current was sweeping him along even faster now.
Glancing skyward again, Harvath saw the shadow of another bridge as he passed beneath it. Knowing it was important to preserve as much of his core body heat as possible, he slowly pulled himself upward. His lungs took in huge burning gasps of air as he broke the surface. He saw that he had passed the second bridge and was a sitting duck in the middle of the river. Taking another large gulp of air, he submerged himself. Kicking his feet and pulling himself forward with a breaststroke, Scot steered himself underwater toward the north bank.
When he came back up for air, he noticed that he had passed the Hotel des Balances. The river was too fast. He needed to grab hold of something…anything. The cold was numbing, his fingers refused to move, and it was all he could do to ball his hands into fists. His head pounded both from the shock of the cold and the exertion.
Another bridge was coming up fast. It was anchored in concrete islands, and there were what looked like iron rings attached in places close to the water level. If he could get ahold of one of those rings, he could at least rest for a moment and figure out what to do. He set his sights on a ring and allowed the current to carry him toward it. It was only a few yards away. He stretched his right arm out of the freezing cold water, willing his fingers to obey and grab hold when his hand made contact. He knew his fingers wouldn’t know when they were touching the iron, he would need to watch and tell them when to close around it. He was closer now, only a yard away, maybe less.