Bloodbath

by David Alexander

  Today, on a windswept day in early October, with Mauthner behind the wheel of a blue Volkswagen Golf electric and Voss slouched in the green vehicle's passenger seat with his sneaker-shod feet propped on the dash, the cops were sitting on a stakeout on a residential street between the Pariser Platz and the left bank of the Spree river. It was a neighborhood of cheap housing that had sprung up from the rubble-strewn wasteland formerly in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Since the influx of refugees from the East after unification, the neighborhood had become a magnet for Berlin's growing population of foreign immigrants from the Balkans, Eurasia and the Middle East.

  For the most part, and despite periodic outbreaks of neo-nazi skinhead violence, the denizens of the quarter lived harmoniously. But civil unrest and ethnic tensions were not what had brought Starsky and Hutch to the neighborhood. They were one team in three that was staking out a group of new arrivals to the vicinity. These newcomers had been brought to the attention of the BKA when a kilo-weight package of Semtex plastic explosive had been discovered by a DHL courier making a shipment to a neighborhood grocer when the shipping carton had accidentally opened before delivery.

  Checks with Immigration and Interpol had disclosed that the grocer's cousin, a man named Farouk Al-Kaukji, had recently arrived from Damascus, Syria and was staying on a thirty-day visitor's visa. Al-Kaukji, who was missing his right arm and part of his right leg, had a history with Interpol that went back several years. Thus he had been watchlisted at Berlin Tempelhof Airport and the BKA notified of his arrival. Al-Kaukji was a bomb-maker for the radical faction of Islamic revolutionaries led by former Allah's Bloody Sword and Swift Death to All Unbelievers leader Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni.

  Dalkimoni, who had long since broken with his early affiliations and become a free agent called Abu Jihad, had employed Al-Kaukji's services on several occasions, especially in bombs used to down jetliners, a specialty of Al-Kaukji's. The combination of Al-Kaukji and a kilo of Semtex added up to the possibility that Berlin was once again becoming a major terrorist bomb assembly entrepot.

  Chief of Counter-terrorist Operations at the Berlin bureau of the German BKA, Inspector Max Winternitz had ordered a team to put the grocery under twenty-four hour surveillance. Another team began following Al-Kaukji as he emerged from the grocery and went about his daily rounds.

  On the first day of the stakeout, the BKA team positioned behind the window of an Indian restaurant across the street from the grocery saw a late-model black Mercedes sedan pull up in front of the store. The Mercedes was driven by a stocky, goateed man who was later identified as one Farid Housek, a naturalized German originally from the Egyptian capital city, Cairo.

  Housek had no record with Interpol, Europol or the BKA's INPOL or SIS criminal database systems, but the FBI knew a little about him from the high-rolling days of BMCI, the criminally bent Bank of Mercantile Commerce International. Housek had then been a minor bagman for BMCI's sprawling Bonn headquarters, used as a go-between in arms transfer deals. With the collapse of BMCI in the early 2000s, Housek had taken a job in the accounting department of Iran Airlines and had led a mostly clean life. Until now, that is.

  A tail team had followed Al-Kaukji in the company of Housek to various destinations around town, most of which were to make purchases at a miscellaneous assortment of shops. At a large department store, Al-Kaukji inspected a number of alarm clocks, and bought four of them. At a computer dealer, Al-Kaukji came out with a laptop and was found to have ordered a desktop PC for delivery to the grocer's for the following day. Other items included a pair of stereo jam boxes, batteries, wire, a portable drill of Japanese manufacture and an assortment of screws, tools and other miscellaneous odds and ends.

  Housek not only chauffeured Al-Kaukji around Berlin, but also brought the bomb-maker to other stops where they met with groups of other men, all of them of Middle Eastern nationality, and all but one of them with known links to fundamentalist and Islamist terrorist organizations.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  In the gray Toyota van parked a half block down the street from Housek's apartment building in the more prestigious Gneisenau section of Berlin, the stakeout team had just started on the first round of coffee and danishes. The van was linked by spread spectrum cell communication and secure radio to each other and to the BKA's headquarters at 24 Leipsigerstrasse. Max Winternitz had just taken a call from Gerhardt Fromm, leader of the stakeout team.

  Today was an important day. Winternitz had been about to give the order for the teams to move in and make arrests when a tap on Al-Kaukji's phone at the grocer's revealed that Abu Jihad himself, Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni, was expected to personally supervise operations in Berlin.

  Dalkimoni had entered the country under an official government passport issued by the Iranian Ministry of Religious Affairs, but had been identified by a sharp-eyed BfV (Bundesampt für Verfussungsschutz or Office for the Protection of the Constitution) internal security watcher who scanned the daily biometric detection take from the airport's overt and covert cameras and sensors.

  The phone tap had yielded a reference to the "cakes" that had arrived and how important it was to "bake them just right." Winternitz decided to postpone the bust until Jihad was in the area.

  Winternitz answered the call to hear Fromm on the other end of the line.

  "Blower just arrived in a cab."

  "Blower" was the code name Winternitz's teams used to refer to Dalkimoni. "He's just paid the driver. Now heading up the walk and entering the building."

  "Keep him in sight. Don't lose him," Winternitz instructed his men. "I'll be right over."

  Winternitz grabbed his jacket and dropped the cell phone into his coat pocket. It was not usual for the Chief of Counter-terrorist Operations to be in on an impending bust, but this was different.

  For one thing, Winternitz had a personal score to settle with Abu Jihad. He wanted to be in on the bust when it went down. In fact, he intended to collar Dalkimoni himself. It was a promise he'd pledged to keep five years before.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  The black Mercedes S-Coupe pulled up to the curb with a screech of tires. Winternitz was out the door even before the driver had shifted into park. He looked once at the entrance to the apartment building on Marksbergerstrasse and then toward the van.

  Inspector Buckholz, Fromm's second in command, had crossed the street toward the big boss.

  "Are Blower and Oyster" -- the latter their name for Farid Housek -- "still inside?"

  "Affirmative," Buckholz answered. "We have a laser detector on the window. We're listening to them in Oyster's living room right now."

  Winternitz turned to one of the two men from the S-Class vehicle's back seat.

  "Go around the back, make sure there are no other ways out of the place. Find the superintendent if necessary," Winternitz told them, adding, "I don't want any slip-ups, understood?"

  "Don't worry, boss, there won't be any," said Rudy, the shorter of the two, and he motioned for the other man to join him. Winternitz watched the two raincoat-clad figures cross the street to the building's entranceway.

  To Buckholz, he said, "Take three men from your team and cover the front of the building. Hans and I are going in the front as soon as Rudy and Rolf secure their end."

  Buckholz nodded. Turning his back to the front of the building and pulling his police radio from his pocket, he began walking across the street. Winternitz leaned against the Mercedes and lit a cigaret. He'd been trying to quit for weeks but this was one occasion when he desperately needed a smoke.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Housek looked at the bullpup automatic rifle propped against the wall like it was something from another planet. Dalkimoni caught the look that told him what Housek didn't dare voice to the bomb-maker: that he was not a man accustomed to using the weapons he occasionally dabbled in selling, and that the realization that he was in way over his head had suddenly dawned on him like thunder.

  "Don't crap out on me, Housek," D
alkimoni advised the other man with icy disdain, not failing to notice the beads of sweat standing on his forehead. "If necessary, you will use that to cover my escape."

  He nodded toward the weapon.

  "Don't worry. I'm okay," Housek assured him.

  Dalkimoni doubted this seriously. But he had no other choice than to depend on the coward for backup.

  They had made the cops staking out the building earlier that morning. They knew a bust was coming down. While the cops' laser bug monitored a laptop recording that Dalkimoni had made earlier, showing casual conversation inside the safe house Housek kept, the shooters had broken out their guns.

  Dalkimoni cocked the bolt action on the AK-47 assault rifle he cradled, jacking a 7.62 millimeter round into the firing chamber. It was almost show time. He looked toward the rear window and licked his lips.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Winternitz stole a glance at his wristwatch. He'd given his three stakeout teams watching Al-Kaukji's friends in other neighborhoods enough time to get into position. Enough. He picked up the Philips short wave commo unit and hit the squelch.

  "This is Winternitz to all teams. Team One, ready?"

  A moment later two hi-lo tones came from the handheld's speaker followed by Hutch's voice.

  "Ready to go, chief."

  "Team Two, what is your situation?"

  "We're in position outside Canker's -- Al Kaukji's -- apartment block," the cop named Bermann reported. "We're ready as soon as the girl with big tits walks by and Helmut shoves his eyeballs back in their sockets."

  "This is not a party," Winternitz told the cop on the other end. "You're not being paid to fuck around. Get in position."

  "Sorry, chief," Bermann said sheepishly. "Don't worry. Alles ist in ordnung -- Everything's in order."

  "It had better be."

  Winternitz said no more. He was in no mood to be trifled with. His men knew very well that their usually easygoing chief was keyed up on this bust. Each had to admit that in Winternitz's position, their nerves would also have been on edge.

  "Rolf, Rudy -- are you gentlemen in position?" he asked the two men he'd sent around back of the apartment block, the other half of the third bust team.

  "All in order," Rudy's voice came back.

  "Then it's a go," Winternitz told all the teams. "Repeat. It's a go. I don't want any heroics, just good, clean police work. Viel glück zum allen. Good luck to you all. Winternitz, out."

  The BKA chief clipped a photo ID card to the breast pocket of his navy blue topcoat and worked the action of his Sig-Sauer P226 9mm semiautomatic pistol. He slipped the gun in his right coat pocket, gestured to Hans and crossed Marksbergerstrasse toward the building's entrance.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Less than five miles to the east, on a street in the Mittel district, the blonde girl with the breasts like helium-filled balloons tipped with Chianti corks that had simultaneously given Helmut eyestrain and "der Ständer" -- a hardon -- was frantically explaining to a bearded man that they had been burned.

  "I made them as cops," she told Farook Nasser, one of the three other men in the flat, all of whom had been part of another cell of Al-Kaukji's bomb-making terrorist brigades in Berlin.

  "You're seeing cops in your sleep, Nikki," Nasser told the buxom blonde woman. "You're smoking too much hashish, I think. Probably fucking too much also. It's making you paranoid."

  "I fuck men for a living. I smoke hash for fun. But I'm not paranoid," Nikki replied, miffed. "I know they're cops because I recognized the one who was ogling me," she told him, straining to appear calm. "He used to work vice when I strolled the Ku'Damm two years ago. My hair was dark then. He doesn't remember me, but I recognized him. He's a filthy pig, that one, a real tittengrapscher. Liked to feel up the girls -- sometimes worse."

  The three men eyed each other. Al-Kaukji nodded at Nasser. Maybe the bitch wasn't as paranoid as they thought after all. Best to take precautions. Al-Kaukji spoke a few words in rapid street Arabic to his companions. Each went to grab and charge their weapons.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  "Starsky" Mauthner rapped on the closed door of the grocery. There was no answer. He gestured to his blond-haired partner to try the basement door. There was no answer there either. Since they both had probable cause, they decided to try to kick the main door in. Also, the door looked fairly easy to smash. "Eminently kickable," was Mauthner's term.

  A few heel-and-sole boot smashes later, the two cops were hustling inside on half-crouches, weapons drawn. They found Al-Kaukji's cousin cowering in a corner of the room. He didn't give them any trouble as he was cuffed and read his constitutional rights under German federal law. They found a back room and the grocer let him in.

  Mauthner gave out a low whistle. They had found something really interesting in here.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Winternitz walked up the service stairs; a sign on the ground floor elevator said that the lift was out of service. Oyster's flat was on the fifth and top floor of the apartment block and Winternitz had three more flights left to go. He was already beginning to get winded. It was those damned cigarets, that and the creeping effects of the aging process.

  He'd been a cop for twenty-four years already, and he had another six years to go before becoming eligible for retirement, four if he opted for early retirement. Perhaps he would, after all, especially if ... but he dared not let himself complete the thought. It might interfere with the job ahead. Winternitz was by no means a superstitious man, but after tragedy strikes and logic is proven wrong, superstition tends to creep in.

  Some five years before, Winternitz's only child, his daughter Juliana, had been a flight attendant on a Lufthansa flight out of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia bound for the Black Sea port of Odessa. An hour into the five-hour flight, when the plane had reached its cruising altitude of 30,000 feet over the Persian Gulf, and the captain had turned off the seat belt and no smoking signs, a group of Islamic terrorists armed with rifles and grenades had seized control of the cabin and cockpit.

  The episode followed the pattern of so many others that had taken place since the first early airline hijackings by the PLO faction, Black September in the early 1970s. In the end a strike by "Die Lederkopfen" -- the German counterterrorist strike force GSG-9 -- had ended a standoff on the tarmac of Helsinki International Airport.

  No passengers were killed in the hijacking, in fact there was only one friendly casualty. This was Winternitz's daughter. She had died long before the Lederkopfen -- Leatherheads -- took the plane.

  Juliana had died while trying to stop the brutal beating of an American onboard the plane. The man's passport had borne what the terrorists had thought was a name that meant "Allah has the genitals of a dog" in the dialect of South Syrian Arabic that one of them, a native of Damascus, spoke. This, the fact that the terrorist assigned to take passports from passengers was somewhat more deranged than his comrades, and the fact that the passenger in question had been carrying military papers, was enough to provoke a rampage.

  No one had raised a finger while two hijackers punched, kicked and pistol-whipped the passenger. Juliana could finally stand it no longer, and despite the risks to her own personal safety, she intervened.

  She received a bullet in the heart for her trouble. She had died almost instantly, but her efforts probably saved the life of the victim.

  The American was one of the survivors. But Juliana, Winternitz's beloved daughter, had returned home in a pine box. Winternitz was shattered by the news and embittered when the man who had pulled the trigger was found to have escaped before the commando raid commenced.

  He was later identified as a man named Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni, originally a Palestinian from Gaza whose first career had been as a veterinarian -- thus the "Doctor" title -- with ties to several terrorist groups.

  Dalkimoni had dropped out of sight for years, then reappeared. By now he was an eminence gris among younger terrorists and dubbed by the honorific title of Abu, or father
.

  Jubaird Dalkimoni, murderer of Max Winternitz's daughter Juliana, was Abu Jihad, the man Winternitz had come here today to arrest -- or kill.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Two floors above them, inside apartment number 5-11, as Winternitz and Hans trudged up to the landing of the apartment block's third floor, Jubaird Dalkimoni had pried the last corner of a roughly four-foot square sheet of heavily enameled galvanized aluminum framed by strips of plywood from a section of kitchen wall between the refrigerator and the ornate prewar molding that surrounded the kitchen entrance.

  It had not taken Dalkimoni long to work the flat blade of the screwdriver beneath the seam of the rectangle, which had been painted in high-gloss white to match the wall in which it was set.

  The emergency exit from the apartment had been Farid Housek's idea. He had noticed the frame when he had moved in the previous year. Because the building dated back to before the Second World War, Housek suspected that the frame was a patch put in to cover what had once been the door of a dumbwaiter shaft.

  Since the apartment was about to be repainted anyway, Housek had decided to pry the panel loose and see what was behind it. As he'd suspected, the musty-smelling shaft stretched all the way down, ostensibly to the basement.

  Still more surprising, the dumbwaiter itself was still in place, just over his head, moored there probably since the end of the Hitler era. Housek pulled on the heavy chain and lowered the dumbwaiter, finding it still in sound working condition.

  Farid Housek decided that it might be useful in the event he needed to make a hasty getaway sometime. He spent the better part of a day testing to see if it would reliably support his weight. This it did, and Housek was in fact able to lower himself all the way down to the basement. Satisfied, he replaced the panel and had not touched it since the painters had come. But he had been incautious in blurting out his secret to Dalkimoni shortly after his arrival.