Desert Fire

by David Hagberg

“Pavli.”

  “Other than him.”

  “When her body was discovered, we went looking for her car. We found it at the KwU parking lot. It had been sabotaged not to run. Someone drove her home.”

  “That is a large company. There are more than ten thousand Germans and other nationals working there.”

  “She worked on your project, with your team.” He kept thinking about the footprints in the blood.

  Leila got up. A strand of hair had come loose and lay across her forehead. It made her seem fragile.

  “I’d like my coat now, and whatever it was you took from Pavli’s apartment,” she said.

  “It was his diary, but I don’t have it.”

  “You have read it?”

  “It’s in Arabic.”

  “Where is it now?” she demanded.

  “It is off for translation. I will personally see that you are provided with a copy.”

  She stared at him in disbelief.

  “It may be material to my investigation,” Roemer said.

  “That book very likely contains sensitive Iraqi state material.”

  “This is not Iraq, Fräulein Kahled. This is Germany, and it is my investigation.”

  “We’ll see,” she snapped, and she turned on her heel and went to the vestibule, where she grabbed her coat.

  Roemer did not move from the arm of the chair. He raised his glass. “Nice seeing you again,” he said softly. She was beautiful, but she was a bitch.

  She let herself out without looking back, and Roemer finished his drink in one swallow. He put the glass down, went to the window and watched her drive away. She might try to pressure Ernst Schaller for the return of the diary, but he doubted it. She would, however, undoubtedly warn the Iraqi team members that a German police investigator suspected one of them of murdering Sarah Razmarah. Or at least he hoped she would.

  Meanwhile, there was Gretchen. He turned away from the window. He should feel bad that he was losing her. But he did not. They’d had a few good years. In a way he felt relieved.

  20

  ROEMER PICKED THE lock on the downstairs mail slot and retrieved the envelope containing Pavli’s diary. Then he drove downtown, arriving at his office well after six. Gehrman was getting ready to leave. He walked across the quiet operations room into Roemer’s office.

  “You don’t look much the worse for wear,” he said.

  “Is Colonel Legler still here?”

  Gehrman shook his head. “He left early, some dinner function somewhere. But he still insisted on seeing you first thing in the morning.”

  Roemer took off his jacket and hung it over his chair. “How about you, Rudi, are you up to some overtime?”

  “I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” the operations chief said, but his eyes were bright. He loved a mystery. The more complicated the better. He had once said: “I should have been a scientist. Figuring out the universe has to be a hell of a lot easier than unraveling human motivations.”

  “Anything yet on our friend Major Whalpol?”

  Gehrman laughed. “What the hell, Walther, it’s only been two hours!”

  Roemer waited.

  “Shit. I could never hold out on you. It came up twenty minutes ago. It’s locked in my desk. Manning’s report came over too.” Gehrman went across to his office as Roemer opened the envelope he had addressed to himself and pulled out Pavli’s diary.

  The entries started nine months ago, presumably when Pavli had been assigned to the KwU project, and continued until the night before his suicide.

  Throughout the book Roemer caught references to Sarah Razmarah, as well as to a lot of other people by initials. Near the end, however, another name was spelled out in the Latin alphabet: Ludwig Whalpol. Pavli knew Whalpol.

  Gehrman returned with two file folders, one thick and the other quite thin.

  Roemer looked up. It was stunning. Pavli had known about Whalpol for at least two months.

  “What is it, Walther? Christ, are you all right?”

  “Who can we get up here right now to translate from the Arabic?”

  Gehrman’s eyes went to the diary in Roemer’s hands. “Janet Hölderlin, downstairs in research. She was here as of half an hour ago.”

  “Get her up here,” Roemer growled. He was suddenly having a bad feeling that he had been set up. That he, and not Manning, had been dragged into this thing as window dressing.

  Gehrman left to make the call, and Roemer opened Whalpol’s dossier in the thin file folder. There were only two sheets of paper: one listing his vitals, including his date and place of birth, his height, weight and blood type (O positive), his educational history, his employment background and his present assignment and addresses. He had houses in Munich and here in Bonn—in Bad Godesberg. He had set Sarah up there so that he could be close to her. It was very cozy.

  The second document, marked “Confidential,” contained a more extensive outline of Whalpol’s background, with emphasis on friends and acquaintances. This was a summary report of Whalpol’s background investigation at his time of entry into the BND.

  None of it was any help. Whalpol was who he presented himself to be, a loyal, hardworking German who had spent most of his career with soft assignments. No assassinations, no battlefields for him. He was an agent runner specializing in industrial espionage.

  “She’s on her way up,” Gehrman said at the door. “What else have you got?”

  “I want you to put a flag on some passports. I want to know if and when they leave the country.”

  “How many of them?”

  “One hundred and twenty-six.” Roemer handed over the dossier on the Iraqi team.

  Gehrman whistled when he opened the folder and looked at the names. “I think it’s time for that explanation now. This is a BND file. A lot of trouble could come from this.”

  “A young girl spying on the Iraqis for Whalpol was murdered.”

  “One of these Iraqis killed her?”

  “It was made to look like that, Rudi.”

  “Then this assignment belongs to the BND.”

  “It was given to me by them. By Whalpol himself.”

  Gehrman’s eyes went automatically to Whalpol’s dossier, then to the diary. “The one who killed himself?”

  “He was spying on us for the Iraqis. He and the girl were lovers.”

  Gehrman shook his head. “Listen to me, Walther, we don’t belong on this mountain. Dump it in Colonel Legler’s lap. Let him make the right noises.”

  “We’re already involved in it, don’t kid yourself.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t fold on me now, Rudi. I need you. With any luck this will be all over by tomorrow.”

  “Do you know who killed her?” Gehrman asked. “The Iraqi?”

  “Get the flag on those passports. But under no circumstances are any of those people to be detained. I just want to know when they come and go.”

  Gehrman shrugged. “I think you are crazy, but what the hell, so am I.”

  21

  JANET HÖLDERLIN WAS a shirttail relative of the German poet. She was in her late thirties, mousy, a little dumpy, never married. But she was very bright. She could read and write in fourteen languages.

  “I want you to listen very carefully to me, Janet, because this matter is of extreme importance,” Roemer began once she was seated.

  Her glasses slipped down on her nose. She pushed them up and nodded.

  Gehrman brought in a tape recorder and Roemer turned it on.

  “I have something that I would like you to translate from the Arabic, orally. But when you are finished, you will leave everything you have seen or heard in this office. You will take no notes, and afterwards you will speak to no one about this. Do you understand?”

  The woman looked from Roemer to Gehrman, who stood by the door, and then back again, before she pushed at her glasses. She nodded. “It is a police matter?”

  “Exactly,” Roemer said. He picked
up Pavli’s diary. “This is a diary of a man who committed suicide recently. The man may also have been involved in a homicide. There may be clues here material to the investigation.”

  The woman nodded again, nervously.

  “I must warn you of one other thing, Janet. There will be information that may be quite startling to you. Perhaps confusing. That should not be your concern. I merely want you to be a translator.”

  “Anything I can do to help, sir.”

  Roemer handed her the diary, then sat back and lit a cigarette.

  Perched on the edge of the seat, her knees primly together, she opened the leather-bound book and scanned the first couple of pages. “A lot of this is in code, sir,” she said. “Initials and things like that.”

  “For instance?”

  She indicated the first page. “The very first entry says: ‘P. was at it again, and we’ve only been here two weeks from seven.’”

  “That’s all right,” Roemer said. “Just go through the book for me. We’ll figure out the code later.”

  22

  ROEMER SAT ALONE in his dark office, smoking a cigarette. He looked out his window at the deserted streets. He was tired again, and his arm was aching.

  He was disgusted. He had listened to parts of the tape three times now. There was little to be gained by going over it again. Nothing would change.

  Ahmed Pavli had known about Ludwig Whalpol. Sarah or someone had told him everything. About how she had been recruited, and how she had been brought in to spy with Pavli as her main target.

  Roemer inhaled deeply and coughed, the smoke burning his raw throat. He felt like hell.

  Pavli wrote in his diary that he had not understood Sarah until he had spoken with LK … Leila Kahled? Afterward he had gone back to Sarah and told her everything, including the fact that he too was a spy.

  And a few days later Sarah was dead. The spy gone bad had been murdered, and then raped after she was dead. A pregnant woman brutally battered. Where was the motive beyond the obvious?

  Gehrman had reluctantly gone home a couple of hours ago, after he had confirmed that flags had been placed on the Iraqi passports. The further they got into this business the unhappier he became.

  “We’re playing with fire, Walther,” he had said after Janet was gone. “Leave it for Legler in the morning. He’ll know what to do.”

  “You worry too much, Rudi. Go home. Your supper will be cold and your children worried. There’s nothing left to do here tonight.”

  Gehrman shook his head. “You dumb bastard. Why don’t you and Gretchen come for dinner on Sunday?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are things going badly again?”

  “Gretchen is gone for the weekend. Some conference up in Berlin.” He thought about Kai Bauer, who’d be fucking her. It embarrassed him more than it hurt.

  “How about you, then? Marlene and the children would love it if you came.”

  Roemer smiled. “No thanks, I’d just as soon be alone this weekend. I have a few things to do.”

  “I understand.” Gehrman went to shut off the lights in his office. Before he left he stopped back. “Listen, Walther, if there is anything you need, give me a call at home. I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

  Roemer nodded.

  “I mean it,” Gehrman said. “And for God’s sake, don’t stay here all night.”

  Roemer went through Manning’s police report, page by page. There was a lot of detail from the search of Sarah’s apartment, testimony from her neighbors (including the observation that her only two regular visitors were men, Pavli and Whalpol), the preliminary forensics results, as well as several photographs of her body and of the bloody footprints, with the comment that they had been made by a man and that the right heel of his shoe was worn down.

  The telephone rang.

  It was Manning. “There was no answer at your apartment, so I figured you’d be in your office,” the KP cop said gruffly. “Sternig brought up the autopsy reports. The child was Pavli’s. We’re ninety-five percent sure.”

  “How about the semen on the girl’s legs. Pavli’s?”

  “No. Wrong blood type. His was A negative.”

  “Then Pavli didn’t kill her.”

  “It’s not likely.”

  “Anything else?”

  Manning hesitated. “I could ask you that, Roemer, but I don’t suppose you’d offer much.”

  “I may have something for you tomorrow.”

  “Yes?” Manning said eagerly.

  “Tomorrow,” Roemer said firmly. Manning would be feeling the squeeze now. He had tried twice to dump the case onto the BKA, and had failed both times. They’d be getting pretty desperate over there, wondering what the hell they had gotten themselves into. But it was murder, and they would have to go through the motions. Knowing Manning, the motions would be extensive and methodical, if unimaginative.

  “We still haven’t found out where he got the pistol. It is a three-fifty-seven magnum. American-made. Unusual.”

  “It wasn’t registered?”

  “No.” Manning laughed derisively. “You saw the impression on her palm. How many Iraqis are running around Bonn just now that she would know, besides that bunch at KwU she was associated with? Don’t worry, Roemer, I know goddamned well where I’m going to find her killer. Only I can’t get to them. Not through ordinary channels.”

  “I might be able to help with that,” Roemer said.

  “Yes?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Roemer sat at his desk for a long time, staring at the photographs of the bloody footprints they had found in Sarah’s apartment and on the stairs. Poor Sarah, he thought. Was it possible to tell in advance which people were doomed by their own natures to such endings? Most murder victims had one thing in common … at least the non-random victims did. They lived dangerous lives. They surrounded themselves with unstable, violent people. They got themselves involved in dangerous situations in dangerous places. But they never really knew it. It was like the man who complained he had been robbed. He could not understand why it had happened to him. He had walked down a dangerous street late at night, alone, wearing expensive clothes and carrying a lot of money. He was a mark. So had Sarah been a mark.

  23

  IT WAS NEARLY one in the morning by the time Roemer drove to Bad Godesberg, finding an address off the Hinterholerstrasse in an area of narrow, tree-lined streets. A lot of the foreign diplomats working in Bonn lived in this section. And there was a lot of old money here.

  He parked his car across the street a half-block from the two-story brownstone house. No lights shone from the windows.

  For a long time Roemer just sat there, watching the house. With the car’s heater turned off, it was cold. But not as cold as the grave.

  He smoked a cigarette, and when he was done he picked up the telephone and gave the mobile operator Whalpol’s number. He stared at the house as he waited for the connection to be made. Whalpol lived alone. He did not have a house staff. But he had two homes, which meant if he was in residence in Munich at the moment (which supposedly was the case), this place would be empty.

  The telephone rang a dozen times before Roemer hung up. Ernst Schaller had seemed frightened of Whalpol, and of whomever he had spoken with on the telephone the other night. Why? He wasn’t a stupid man. There was a lot of this business that the Chief District Prosecutor knew but that had not been presented that night.

  Roemer got out of his car, hunched up his coat collar against the chill wind, crossed the street and, keeping within the shadows, walked up to Whalpol’s house. He let himself in the gate and went to the front door.

  The door was secured by an ordinary tumbler lock. Roemer studied it a moment in the dim light, then took a thin leather case out of his jacket pocket, opened it and selected a long, thin stainless-steel pick. A number six. The lock was stiff with the cold, so it took him nearly two minutes to get it slipped. He pushed the door open a few centimeters with his foot.
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  The house was quiet. There were no lights, nor were there any audible alarms.

  Roemer slipped inside, closed and locked the door, then moved silently through the vestibule into a narrow stairhall. The living room was to the right.

  Walking on the balls of his feet, Roemer went up the stairs, which opened onto a short corridor, two doors on either side. A faint odor of perfume, cologne or soap lingered above a mustiness. This house was not used very much, but someone had been here. Recently.

  The first room appeared to be a guest room; two chairs and a table, a bed, a chest of drawers and a Schrank, empty. The second contained boxes of books stacked in one corner. The third, at the end of the corridor, was a small bathroom, and the fourth, on the right, was the master bedroom, with a wide bed, a big chest and a very large Schrank against the far wall.

  Roemer went to the window, which looked out over a rear courtyard, and pulled the heavy curtains tightly shut. Then he turned on the light and opened the Schrank. Several shirts and trousers were hung on one side, two of Whalpol’s old-fashioned suits on the other. On the floor of the big wardrobe were three pairs of shoes, two pairs black and one brown, all of them substantial oxfords with heavy soles and thick leather heels.

  One pair of the black shoes was nearly new, but the other black pair and the brown ones were much older. The right heel on each pair was worn down.

  Roemer took both right shoes out of the Schrank and held them up to the light. The brown shoe was clean, the black was dusty. The brown shoe had been recently cleaned. The sole and heel had been scrubbed.

  Sarah Razmarah’s face had been crushed as if someone wearing heavy shoes had stomped her to death. Christ, Roemer thought. Why had they asked him to investigate? What had they wanted him to find? How much control had they expected to exert over him?

  He set the brown shoe aside for the moment and, no longer giving a damn how much noise he was making, began searching the room, ripping drawers open.

  Quickly he found the jewelry box in the top drawer of the chest. For a moment he just looked at it, as if the thing were diseased. Whalpol was arrogant, but was he stupid?