by Brad Thor
They rode to the fifth floor where the elevator opened up onto a gorgeous, antique filled penthouse apartment.
This was a part of the King George even Herman had apparently never seen before. “Frau Putzkammer’s abode?” he asked.
“Actually, it isour home,” replied Nixie.
“You meanyou and Gerdaare ?”
“Mother and daughter,” said Nixie, cutting Herman off before he could say what he really thought their relationship was. “My full name is Viveka Nicollet Putzkammer.”
“I had no idea,” offered Herman, stunned.
“Not many people do. That’s the way mother has always wanted it. After private boarding schools in both France and Switzerland, I received my bachelor’s degree at the University of Southern California and my MBA at Kellogg in Chicago, then I returned home to Berlin to help run the family business.”
“And from the looks of everything,” replied Herman, “you’ve been doing a very good job.”
“But how did you know aboutFür die Sicherheit ?” interjected Harvath.
Nixie motioned for her guests to take a seat in the sunken living room, as she crossed a series of beautiful oriental carpets and retrieved a large beer stein from atop one of the many bookshelves lining the far wall. Returning with the mug, she smiled as she handed it to Harvath and said, “One of my mother’s most prized possessions.”
He didn’t need to read the inscription on it to know what it was. Seeing the piece of barbed wire wrapped around the bottom was enough.
“Where’d she get this?” asked Harvath.
“It was a gift,” replied Nixie.
Harvath recalled the stein that Hellfried Leydicke had above his bar and half-assumed that Gerda Putzkammer had been another helpful outside supporter of Gary’s team. But when he flipped the stein upside down and saw the serial number, he was stunned. 10/12.Ten of twelve .A real team mug . A quiet, subconscious ping echoed in Harvath’s mind as if his mental radar had bounced back off of something he had been looking for.
“The man who gave that stein to her was named John Parker,” said Nixie. “My mother loved him very much. Enough to let him go back home to America when he was recalled after the wall fell.”
“Did he know that your mother was pregnant?” asked Herman, taking a guess.
“No. In fact, my mother didn’t even know until he had already gone.”
“She never tried to make contact?”
“You have to know my mother. She is a very proud woman. The last thing she would want is for people to think that she needed a man to take care of her.”
“How about you?” asked DeWolfe. “Don’t you want to have a relationship with your father?”
“I do have one. Although not the kind you’re thinking of,” replied Nixie. “My mother told me that my father had died shortly after I was born, and for many years I believed her. Then, one day, I found the room where she hid her diaries and other personal effects. I spent weeks sneaking into that room. I read everything that I could get my hands on and eventually discovered who my father was. That’s why I decided to do my undergrad work at USC.
“I nannied for their family in Thousand Oaks for four wonderful years. He had married his old sweetheart shortly after returning to the States from Berlin. Though I would have preferred he had married my mother, his wife was a wonderful woman and he is a wonderful man. I like to think that had he known my mother had gotten pregnant, he would have done the right thing by her. But it was Mother’s decision to keep things quiet and knowing her the way I do, I can respect that. Though my father didn’t really know who I was while I was working for him, he nonetheless treated me as if I was one of his very own daughters. We still keep in touch via email.”
Harvath hated to do it, but he took a deep breath and said, “Nixie, I’m sorry to tell you this. John Parker is dead.”
“No,” said Nixie, blanching. “That can’t be true.”
“I’m afraid it is,” replied Scot. “They killed almost all of the people on his Berlin team.”
“Who killed him? And what do you meanalmost all of the people on his Berlin team?”
“At this point, I’m not at liberty to tell you who killed your father, but I can tell you this. Two people on the team are still alive. One of those people was your father’s commanding officer. That man has been like a second father to me and the same people who shot and killed your father have shot and tortured him. Right now he is being operated on in a Berlin hospital and no one can say for sure if he is going to make it.”
Nixie was doing the best she could to control her emotions. “Who is the other man?” she asked.
“The other man,” said Harvath,” is another of your father’s teammates. The King George was a covert contact point for them a long time ago.”
“That comes as no surprise. This entire building is riddled with secret doors and passageways that helped certain people sneak in and out during the Cold War. My mother was very proud of her involvement in foiling the Russians and their East German counterparts.”
“And so she should be,” said Harvath. “But what we need now isyour help. We have a chance to stop the men who killed your father, before they can kill anyone else. What do you say?”
Nixie was silent. She strode across the sunken living room to a cocktail cart where she dumped a scoopful of crushed ice into a stainless steel cocktail shaker and filled the balance with vodka. Placing a lid atop, she shook the canister while she retrieved a Martini glass from one of the lower shelves and sprayed the rim with a vermouth atomizer.
Filling the glass, she inhaled the martini’s deep aroma for a moment as if she were savoring a fine wine, and then took a long drink, draining the glass. Finally, she turned to Harvath and said, “Yes, I will help you, but on one condition.”
“What is it?” replied Scot.
“When you find the man that killed my father, I want you to kill him. No trial, no jail time. I want you to promise me that he will die.”
Harvath was up against it, and he knew that there was only one answer he could give. After a long silence, he answered, “I promise.”
Chapter 32
“ …and the phone on the desk is her private line. It’s the most secure place my mother could have provided your friends if they needed to conduct this type of call,” said Nixie as she showed the men into the hidden room her mother used as a private office. “I know this is confidential, so I’ll wait for you downstairs in the reception area. Good luck.”
Harvath thanked Nixie as DeWolfe found the corresponding phone plugs in the small plastic case they had brought with them. DeWolfe attached the burst transmitter to the phone line first from the jack, and then ran another cord from the transmitter to the phone so that Harvath could either talk or burst without having to rearrange any of the equipment.
The transmitter connected, they sat down with a piece of paper and tried to figure out the encryption code Gary would have established with Frank Leighton, while Harvath continued to glance at his watch.
After seeing the stein in the Putzkammers’ livingroom, Scot had become convinced that the code somehow involved the serial numbers on the bottom of the team mugs.
“So what was Leighton’s number then?” asked DeWolfe.
“He was somewhere in the middle. Five or six, I think,” replied Harvath, trying to remember back to the stein he had seen in the laundry room that doubled for Leighton’s home office back in Maryland. “No, wait. It was seven.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” replied Harvath.
“That’s still only three digits—the seven and the twelve.”
“Not if you put a zero in front of it,” said Herman who was looking through some of the boxes of memorabilia that Gerda Putzkammer had stored in her office. “That would be the correct way to do it.”
“So it would read 07 of 12?” asked Harvath.
DeWolfe wrote it down and said, “That would work, but what about the rest of it?
”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” said Harvath. “Gary was a Patton fan. Actually he was more like a Patton freak.”
“As in General Patton?” asked DeWolfe.
“Yeah, he had studied the guy up and down. He knew all of his moves, and just like Gary, Patton didn’t care for the Soviets one single bit. In fact, at the end of World War II, Patton wanted permission to go after them. He said if the U.S. would give him ten days, he’d start a war with them that would make it look like their fault and the U.S. could be justified in pushing them all the way back to Moscow.”
DeWolfe, concerned with their dwindling timeframe, said, “So Gary liked Patton. Patton hated the Communists and wanted to get rid of them. Being army guys, Gary’s men probably also liked Patton. That is a legitimate connection. Now, what can we take numbers wise from him? It has to be something relatively easy to remember.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Harvath. “Patton commanded the Third Army in World War II, and they spent 281 days fighting in Europe.”
“Possible,” said DeWolfe with a certain degree of skepticism as he wrote it down.
“He invented the 1913 Patton sword.”
DeWolfe continued writing. “Okay.”
“Don’t forget the M-46 and M-47 Patton Tanks,” said Herman, picking up another catalog.
“I think we’re really reaching on these,” replied DeWolfe.
“I can also give you his birth date, death date, and the date he was buried.”
“That’s a bit better. All right, we’ll give these a try, but if we can’t crack it, you’ll have to wing it with Leighton. The mere fact that you located the proper emergency contact point should win you some credibility with him.”
Harvath nodded his head in response, but knew that if he couldn’t fulfill the full terms of the emergency contact plan, Leighton wasn’t going to listen to a thing he had to say.
DeWolfe powered up the burst transmitter and waited as it cycled through the welcome screen and then dropped him into the calendar program. “Okay. We’re in the calendar function. As I said before, the key here is to tap into the correct date. What do we want to try first?”
“Birth date,” said Harvath. “November 11th 1885.”
“The scheduler doesn’t go back that many years. Let’s just focus on the actual month and day,” replied DeWolfe as he found November 11th and went to the appointment scheduler.
“Anything?” replied Harvath.
“Nope. Just a regular page.”
“No prompts for a security code when you try to make an appointment?”
“No. Let’s try another date.”
They tried the date Patton died, the date of his burial and even the date of his car accident without any luck.
“How much time do we have left?” asked DeWolfe.
Harvath checked his tactical chronograph. “Less than fifteen minutes.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Try July 22nd.”
“What’s that correspond to?” asked DeWolfe as he scrolled to the date.
“Patton’s capture of Palermo.”
Harvath could tell by the look on DeWolfe’s face that the date wasn’t a winner. “Try August 16th. The capture of Messina.”
“Nothing,” said DeWolfe.
“Shit. May 8th. Victory Day in Europe.”
“Still nothing.”
“Well,” said Harvath, “does anyone have any other suggestions?”
Herman cleared his throat on the other side of the office and asked, “Did you ever see the moviePatton with George C. Scott?”
“Sure,” replied Harvath, glancing again at his watch, “I don’t know a single red-blooded American military person who hasn’t, but what does that have to do with what we’re trying—” Suddenly, he had an idea. Turning to DeWolfe, he said, “Try June 5th.”
“What’s June 5th?”
“The opening scene in the movie is the speech Patton gave the Third Army before the D-Day invasion. I should have thought of that earlier. It’s probably the greatest speech Patton ever gave.”
“You’re welcome,” said Herman who went back to reading his catalog.
“Bingo,” exclaimed DeWolfe. “The scheduler is asking us to enter a code. What now?”
“Let’s start running through some of the numbers we came up with. Try Leighton’s stein number and subtract the amount of days the third army was in Europe, plus today’s date.”
Harvath waited until DeWolfe looked up from the transmitter and said, “Negative.”
“Okay, Leighton’s number minus the 1913 sword classification, plus today’s date.”
Once again, DeWolfe responded, “Negative.”
“Patton’s sidearm was a .45-caliber Colt Peacemaker. How about substituting 45 for 1913?”
DeWolfe ran the equation, but still came up empty. “Zip,” he said.
“Damn it,” replied Harvath, his frustration mounting as the minutes ticked away. “I know Patton believed in reincarnation and really identified with Hannibal, the Carthaginian general. Hannibal began his march on Rome in 218. Try that.”
“Scot, you’re reaching way far here.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No, but—”
DeWolfe was interrupted by a snort from Herman.
“What’s so funny?” snapped Harvath. “You got a problem with Hannibal?”
“I wasn’t laughing about Hannibal,” replied Herman.
“What were you laughing at then?”
“Never mind.”
“No. What is it? I want to know.”
“In the beginning of The King George, Gerda Putzkammer apparently offered her customers printedmenus , just like in a restaurant. And no matter what it was, every price ended in sixty-ninepfennings. Very kitsch.”
Harvath was just about to tell Herman he wasn’t helping, when he got that ping in his head again and this time it shook something loose. “Take 68 and subtract Leighton’s 0712, plus today’s date,” he said to DeWolfe.
“But what’s 68?” asked the communications expert.
“Just do it.
Harvath was sitting literally on the edge of his seat until DeWolfe looked up with a smile and turning the transmitter toward him said, “We’re in.”
“We are?” said Herman, setting down his the materials he was looking at and walking over to the desk. “Where the hell did the number68 come from?”
“Don’t ask me,” said DeWolfe. “Ask Harvath. He finally figured out the code.”
With his eyes glued on the burst transmitter, Scot replied, “When we were driving back to the hospital, DeWolfe and I were talking about how burst codes needed to be easy to remember. That made me think about Patton and how he said that when he wanted his men to remember something and really make it stick, he used eloquent profanity. Sometimes, so did Gary. You just reminded me of an old joke of his that I hadn’t thought about in a long time.What’s a 68? It’s like a 69, except you do me and I owe you one .”
“Are you sure Gary wasn’t a SEAL?” laughed DeWolfe. “How much time do we have left?”
“Three minutes.”
“Then you’d better get cracking on your message. Take the stylus and tap the icon for the keyboard. When it comes up, type it out just like we talked about and put it into thewaiting to be sent folder. When it’s time to burst, you just tap the send icon. Okay?”
“Seems easy enough,” answered Harvath who wrote out the message as quickly and as succinctly as he could.
Less than three minutes later, Frau Putzkammer’s telephone rang. Herman and DeWolfe were completely silent as Harvath picked up the receiver and said, “This is Norseman.”
After a second of what could only have been shocked silence, Leighton said. “So you made it.”
“I told you I was for real.”
“That may be, but you’re not home free yet.”
“And neither are you. Are you ready to receive my transmission?”
asked Harvath.
1200 kilometers away in the Gulf of Finland, Leighton checked his burst transmitter and said, “Go ahead.”
As the message appeared on his screen, Leighton was stunned by what he was reading:
Your mission has been compromised. Entire Dark Night team terminated. Gary Lawlor seriously wounded. Prognosis unclear.
Mission parameters now changed. We are coming to you. Will explain at your location. Hold position and exercise extreme caution. You are being watched.
The entire team has been terminated? They think I’m being watched?Though a million other questions were racing through Frank Leighton’s mind, he knew he would have to wait to get his answers and so typed a concise and professional reply:
Message received and understood. Will continue to hold position. What is your ETA?
Harvath read through Leighton’s response and typed:
Within next twenty-four hours. Keep all weapons on safe. We will be making covert insertion and don’t want any friendly fire. Leave package in place until our arrival. Be ready to move.
As Harvath was about to tap thesend icon with his stylus, the lights dimmed and then went out, plunging the room into complete darkness.
“What the hell is going on?” asked DeWolfe.
“Maybe too many vibrators recharging at the same time,” replied Herman.
“Very funny,” said Harvath, retrieving his SureFire flashlight. “Hey, DeWolfe? Does this burst transmitter have a backlight function so I can see it better?”
“It should. Go to the star logo in the upper left hand corner and click on it, then selectsettings and there should be abacklight function box. Selectyes and it should fire right up.”
Harvath followed DeWolfe’s instructions and the screen began to glow a deep red. It was an interesting color for a device masquerading as a civilian product, but made perfect sense for a piece of covert equipment that might be called upon to operate in difficult nighttime conditions where the least visible light spectrum would be required.