Fatal Network

by Trevor Scott

  Toni quickly downed her beer. "Let's go, kid."

  She had explained to him the tactics she wanted to use on Lt. Budd. At first it was hard for him to accept the use of drugs and electrical shock on a fellow officer. But the thought of selling out American technology sickened him even more.

  Hours passed. The interrogations became more intense. Kurt's job was to monitor the whole charade from a small control room on closed circuit television. From time to time he would ask questions or make comments over a loud speaker through a muffled microphone. Most comments were in Italian, to make it appear that he was in charge and running the show. He could bring pain with a simple word bugiardo, or liar. The small electrical shocks were intensified in Lt. Budd's mind by a drug Toni had given him. He was in a lot less pain than he thought. She spoke to Lt. Budd in mostly Italian to confuse him, and then in broken English when she really wanted to know something.

  The information came slowly. But Leo Birdsong had been right all along. Lt. Budd, the Bingo King, was squeamish at the least. The drugs didn't help his cause. Toni would administer one drug to knock him out long enough for her to change clothes. Then she gave him another drug to awaken him to make it appear as though another day had passed. All along he was on sodium pentothal to allow the words to flow more freely.

  After nearly fifteen hours, Toni and Kurt had enough information on tape to keep their investigation going for weeks. Lt. Budd implicated Petty Officer First Class Shelby Taylor and two other men aboard the USS Roosevelt. The number Toni got from him earlier was to a place of business in Rome-an American is all he knew. In the end, Toni placed Lt. Budd into a deep narcosis.

  Toni and Kurt had nearly dropped from exhaustion. They slept until evening, so they could return Lt. Budd to his room under the shroud of darkness.

  Kurt woke to the sound of his watch alarm. Toni was sleeping on the sofa. He sat and watched her for a while. Her performance had been nothing less than spectacular. She earned an Academy Award as far as he was concerned. Her skin looked so soft; her high cheek bones and strong jaw were more beautiful than he had ever seen. Finally, he shook her to wake her up.

  "Toni? We've got work to do."

  "Jake, leave me alone," she said softly.

  Jake? Who the hell is Jake?

  Kurt shook her again-this time more violently.

  "Toni! Get up," he said more loudly.

  Finally her big brown eyes opened and looked directly at Kurt.

  "Kurt?"

  "Yeah, Kurt, not Jake," he said, disturbed. "Who the hell is Jake anyway?" He sounded more like a jealous boy friend than he wanted to or had the right to. "Never mind."

  "No, it's okay. Jake Adams is a guy I know, or used to know. I haven't seen or heard from him in over a year and a half. We were close."

  "Did you work together?"

  "Not really." She paused for a second, smiled. "He worked as an Air Force intelligence officer at the Rome Embassy before he was reassigned to Germany. He also worked for the Company after he resigned his commission. He came to Italy a lot. His specialty is computers. We had a...relationship. He left the CIA and Europe over a year ago."

  Kurt went to the refrigerator and got a cold beer.

  "You remind me of him a little."

  "How's that?" he said and then took a big gulp of beer.

  "Well, I don't know. You look a little like him. Could we change the subject, kid?" Toni pleaded. "I've got a headache. I think it's from all the yelling I did in Italian. I think we got everything we need from him."

  There was a pause.

  "You were a pro in there," Kurt complimented. "I learned a lot, and I really appreciate that."

  "Thanks. You weren't half-bad yourself."

  They both seemed a bit uncomfortable.

  "Let's go, kid," Toni finally said. "We've gotta get this Bozo back to the post before someone misses him."

  Kurt went to the interrogation room, lifted Lt. Budd over his shoulder once again, and carried him to the car. It reminded him of numerous times in high school when he had to carry his friend home after a night of drinking. After setting him in the trunk, Kurt and Toni drove back to the post to return him to his room. In the morning he'd feel like a truck ran him over, but his memory would be nonexistent.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 12

  BAD HONNEF, GERMANY

  Jake found a room in a small town on the outskirts of Bonn. He brought only a small bag with a change of clothes and a suitcase with his equipment into his room. The suitcase resembled a metal camera case that he carried on the plane with him. It contained a laptop computer with a fax modem enclosed in a firm rubber insert, and various other small electronic devices. The small tracking transmitter was still under the front seat of the Passat, so there was an open spot in the rubber.

  It was nearly an hour past the time he was to call Milt Swenson. Jake punched in Milt's private number.

  After a pause and a few rings. "Hello," said a voice from Portland.

  "Jake Adams!" After he said his name he put his hand over the mouthpiece quickly and looked toward the door. He thought he heard a noise outside his room.

  "Is everything all right?" Milt asked.

  "Yeah," he said calmly. "I just thought I heard someone in the corridor. I've got some news. Bundenbach Electronics. Do you know anything about that company?"

  There was a pause. "Yeah, I've heard of them," Milt said derisively. "But they're no IBM. Why do you ask?"

  "They hired Gunter Schecht, a former German Intelligence agent, to follow me."

  "Why would they do that?"

  "I don't know, but I need some information," Jake said. "Could you run a background on Bundenbach and fax it to my modem here." Jake gave him the telephone number to his room.

  "No problem," Milt said. "I should be able to get that in about an hour. Anything else?"

  "No! If I need you, I'll call you there or at your private home phone. I won't be available much."

  "Jake, what does this company have to do with Charlie Johnson missing?" Milt asked.

  Jake thought for a moment. "I'm not sure. But I'll find out."

  "Thanks, Jake."

  Jake plopped the phone back in its crevice.

  The information from Milt would be helpful, but Jake also knew he needed a German perspective on Bundenbach Electronics. When he worked in Germany, he had access to numbers to various foreign government agencies and some private companies and banks. Most of the intelligence agencies and police, like the German Polizei, changed their access codes every three months. So he wasn't sure how many would work. Jake quickly linked his laptop computer to his phone line. The numbers were hidden on his hard drive in different places.

  He'd have to work fast so he could free his modem and not miss Milt's transmission. Within a few minutes, Jake had accessed the German equivalent of the U.S. Commerce Department. He down loaded about ten pages of information on Bundenbach to his hard drive. That would take him a while to translate into English. He wasn't really sure what to look for. He hoped that whatever it was would jump out from the page.

  After about a half hour of meticulously translating boring statistics on Bundenbach Electronics, Jake switched off the LCD screen, turned off the light in his room and went to sleep.

  It had been one of the hottest days in San Remo history. The Italian Riviera was speckled with sun worshippers hiding under their colorful umbrellas. The afternoon sun had skirted its way around the balcony of Jake's hotel room overlooking the aquamarine Mediterranean. He stood against the twisted metal railing with only his tight white tennis shorts and his black sunglasses hiding his nakedness. The intense sun over the past week had tanned his body to a golden brown.

  Jake glanced back into the room. A soft breeze fluttered the sheers next to the open sliding glass door. Toni lay asleep on the bed following long, passionate lovemaking. Sex had become a staple of life like a good wine and pasta or the smell of the wondrous San Remo flower gardens.

  Other women o
n the beach below couldn't compare to Toni's natural beauty, Jake thought. Her perfectly rounded breasts, firm butt and long, tight legs would excite any man. Her curly, black silky hair flowed delightfully over her broad shoulders. She could have easily had a successful modeling career, but instead, the adventure of the CIA and Europe beckoned her. Jake was thankful. He smiled at her beautifully naked form.

  Jake moved inside and slipped off his shorts. As he flipped off his sun glasses and threw them to a chair, he rolled onto the crumpled sheets of the large bed, slid his hand across Toni's smooth shoulder, and kissed her on the nape of the neck. She scrunched her neck and sighed.

  "Um...again?"

  He slid his hand down to her smooth, firm butt and then between her legs to her wet, curly mound.

  "Yes!"

  They had only two days left. They had to make the most of them.

  Jake woke in darkness and disoriented in his new room. Sweat beads on his forehead chilled him-reminding him that he was in Germany and not basking in the Italian sun with Toni Contardo. Was she still working in Italy? If she had her way, that's where she'd be.

  Jake switched on a small desk lamp. He looked at the phone on the desk. He still had Toni's number. Did she still live in that second floor apartment in Rome? Maybe he'd call her later.

  He noticed his computer on the table had received a call. Sleep would be more difficult now, thinking of Toni. He'd have to read the information Milt had sent.

  He logged into the new file. The first page was a basic prospectus of Bundenbach Electronics. What they produced. Profit and loss statements. There were no losses. In fact, if Jake was a betting man, which he was on occasion, he could invest in this company on the strength of this information and that from the German commerce department that had been translated so far. The company seemed too good to be true. Too squeaky clean to hire a guy like Gunter Schecht. Another page caught Jake's eye-a list of subsidiaries, production facilities, and clients.

  Bundenbach had a number of German government contracts; mostly for the Tiger II Panzer, the main German battle tank, and helicopters. No fixed-wing aircraft contracts. The majority of its business was commercial, though.

  Jake had a number of subsidiaries to check into. He had a feeling that most of Sunday would be spent in front of a computer screen. Maybe it would rain.

  The room was completely dark until Jake pulled the thick nylon cord to the right of the window allowing the early morning sun to seep through the rolladens and then totally engulf the tiny room. He felt the radiator below the window for a sign of warmth, but found none. He had forgotten to open the valve before he went to sleep. He needed food, but that could wait. Bells from a nearby Catholic church rang, and he counted them out to himself nine times.

  His computer had become nearly as important as a seeing-eye dog to a blind man. He had found that with properly configured and operated equipment, his one-man investigation could accomplish as much as an entire group of agents in the past. But the camaraderie was sorely missed. Jake logged on to the small laptop computer and began accessing the information he had received the night before from the German Commerce Department. He tried to read about the subsidiaries of Bundenbach Electronics, the seemingly endless figures, but his mind kept drifting off to Toni Contardo and Italy. Things with pleasure.

  The cursor on the computer screen blinked quickly on and off prompting Jake for more data. Back to Bundenbach.

  Jake sifted through all the information on Bundenbach Electronics. He was looking for a common link or reason why this German company needed this particular information and technology. There had to be a reason. Sure the technology was important in itself, but was it so important to fill Jake's rental car full of holes? And why hire a guy like Gunter Schecht? The whole case was becoming an enigma. The CIA had trained him to piece together bits of information and draw conclusions to come up with a reasonable analysis of a situation. His specialty was human intelligence. One on one, he was among the best. But this case was puzzling. There could be a number of reasons why Bundenbach wanted the Teredata technology, but Jake was beginning to feel that economics was the most important factor. A national security issue would be attracting his old employer and German Intelligence.

  Throughout the documents a few facts were disturbing. Bundenbach's research and development costs had decreased steadily over the past two years, and projections indicated that they would diminish even further. This could only mean one of two things. Either Bundenbach was getting ready to go through a stabilization phase to rest on its laurels, or they had fired a number of good researchers in favor of industrial espionage agents like Gunter Schecht. Had it become more cost effective to steal than develop?

  That might be a good move for the short term, but a corporate death sentence for the long term. Without its own independent researchers, Bundenbach would simply become a clone company. Maybe that's all they wanted to be? No! Jake didn't believe that for a moment. Bundenbach had been far too shrewd in the past to allow that. Stealing technology was more of a Russian or Western technique. Could Bundenbach be transferring the technology on to the Russians? That made no sense.

  The church bells rang twelve times. Jake went to the window and looked to the street below. Well-dressed Germans walked arm in arm toward the large Gothic Cathedral on the corner across the Goethestrasse at the base of his Gasthaus. The Germans didn't seem to care that they were late, he thought. The Priest could become impatient, but God would surely wait.

  Now he had to move on to a new location. But where should he go? There were still too many questions unanswered. The more he dug into Bundenbach Electronics, the more its image had tarnished. At first glance, the company appeared flawless. But then you add a corrosive agent like Gunter Schecht, and the shine quickly faded. Bundenbach's shifting of funds away from research and development was at least a curious aberration.

  Then he thought about the German Customs Agent, Herbert Kline, watching Bundenbach Electronics. He could be some help.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 13

  BONN, GERMANY

  The banks of the Rhine were still swollen from days of near-freezing rain. The sun was little comfort-warming the inside of Jake's rental Passat, but helping little to warm the Sunday afternoon strollers along the west bank of the great European river.

  Jake had checked out of the Gasthaus in Bad Honnef and driven to a popular park near the German government buildings in Bonn. He knew that Herbert Kline always came to this park on Sundays to feed the ducks and swans.

  As if a meeting had been prearranged, Herb was sitting on a wooden bench with concrete end supports feeding those birds brave enough to waddle close to him. Jake quietly walked up behind Herb and stood within five feet of him. It sounded as though Herb was talking to himself, but Jake couldn't make out what he was saying.

  "Guten Tag," Jake said.

  Herb startled by hunching his shoulders quickly, and then turned his head to see who had disturbed his peace.

  "Jake?"

  Jake moved around to the front of the bench.

  "I thought you went back to America?"

  "I did, but airplanes travel in both directions," Jake said with a smile.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "Same as you. Trying to figure out what's going on with Bundenbach Electronics." Might as well get to the point, Jake thought.

  Herb's eyebrows rose sharply with that revelation.

  "Before you ask...I'm working for myself now," Jake said. "The money's better, and I choose the jobs and the hours I work."

  Herb looked as though he was trying to digest the startling reality of Jake's sudden appearance, and what Jake had just said.

  "What do you know, Jake?" Herb asked.

  "I know that Gunter Schecht is still a slime, and his new employer is Bundenbach."

  Herb smiled finally. "Okay. We agree on that." He paused. "I know he's been buying up some American technology for his new boss, but I don't know why, honestly."
/>   Jake hesitated for a moment. "Do you know why this is so important to Bundenbach?"

  "No!" Herb said. "Jake, I know people don't think I'm good at what I do, but I have been good. Far before you or your associates worked Germany. I was damn good-maybe too good. You've probably laughed behind my back like the rest of them."

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "Because I'm sick of people not taking me seriously. I'm sick of people thinking I'm some drunken old fool. Well I'm old and I may get drunk a lot, but I'm no fool."

  Jake sat down on the other side of the bench. He ran his hands through his thick hair. "I've never laughed at you, Herb, and I've never taken you for a fool. It takes a lot more courage and inner strength to stick it out with an inflexible bureaucracy."

  "You think so? I think it takes great strength to stand up to the bureaucracy and say it's wrong. I haven't done that for a long time," Herb said.

  Jake looked down at the dark flowing water. "Maybe we should work together on this case," he said. "I could use your help."

  Herb was thinking it over.

  "Herb, do you know that Gunter and his boys tried to blow me away Friday?" Jake asked.

  Herb flicked his head up quickly. "No!"

  "It's personal now. I'm a professional, but nobody shoots at me without some sort of return fire. Bullets or prosecution, that's up to the guilty bastard who tries it."

  There was silence for a moment. Only the swishing of the Rhine and an occasional squawk from a duck.

  Finally, Jake asked, "I'm looking for an American tech rep named Charlie Johnson. Works at Bitburg Air Base for an American contractor named Teredata International Semiconductors. I work for the president of that company out of Portland."

  After a few moments of hesitation, Herb finally said, "Charlie Johnson is dead."

  "Shit! Are you sure?"

  "Yes. I saw Gunter and two others knock him silly and throw him into the Rhine last week in Koblenz," Herb said." I was tailing Gunter and his men because I got a tip about Bundenbach buying up some restricted American technology. Johnson was selling something to Gunter. Jake, I keep looking down at the Rhine to see if I can see him floating by. I know it's impossible, but your mind does strange things sometimes."