'This man can do Internet?' Pravic growled. His voice was slurred.
'That's what he said. Look, there's a cab over there.' She waved and the Mercedes turned towards them. 'Will you ring me tomorrow?'
'What you mean? You come with me!'
'I can't, Milan.'
'Yes. You come.' He gripped her arm.
'Milan . . .' she protested. 'I told you. The bloke in the bar fixed this up as a favour.'
Pravic hadn't understood what she meant.
'A favour ... it means I've got to do him one in return. . .'
He let go of her arm and ducked into the car. Gisela watched it speed away, terrified something monstrous was fermenting in the mind of her one-time lover.
The taxi turned up Ghausseestrasse. At each set of red traffic lights, the driver thumbed through his street plan trying to locate the address.
Fifteen minutes after being picked up, Pravic was deposited outside a small apartment house with plaster flaking from the walls. The panel of bell-pushes hung loose, but when he pressed the button next to the name he'd been given, there was a quick response.
'Yes?'
'You are expecting me,' Pravic said, anxious not to give a name. 'For the computer.'
'Yes, yes. Third floor.'
The door buzzed and Pravic pushed it open.
The man was wearing a dressing gown. From the small hallway Pravic caught a glimpse through a gap in a doorway. Satin sheets and the leg of a female.
'Aber, mach's schnell, Heini.' The woman's voice was a whine. The man closed the bedroom door and led Pravic into a living room cluttered with cardboard boxes. On a table next to a reading lamp was a computer.
'So what's this about? What do you want?' the man asked, irritated. 'Let's be quick. I've got things to do.'
'You can do Internet?' Pravic asked, looking down at the floor.
'Go on-line? Of course. But what do you want?' He switched on the equipment, glancing curiously at his weird visitor.
'You see, I am from Bosnia,' Pravic began, trying to look sincere. 'My family all killed.just one survive. A girl. MY sister's child. Some people bring her to Germany just now because they think she has no family. They use Internet to find new home for her. Because they think there is no person of her own family to look after her. But they wrong. She has me. Now I must find her. Her name Vildana.'
Pfefferheim
Lorna couldn't sleep for thinking that Alex was nearby. She just wasn't made for the games she was putting herself through.
The house was quiet, the Roche family and Vildana all sound asleep. She tiptoed into the Colonel's den and powered up his Compaq. He wouldn't mind, she,told herself She'd worked out what to say in the message to Bella, intending to type it quickly and send it. But the 'mail' message flashed, telling her there was something new for her.
Bella again.
Saturday nite.
'Hi Lorna! Listen. You've got to do something about this guy Alex. Put him out of his misery. He called again and left a phone number. Sounds so cute. If you don't want him, I'll have him.'
Lorna wrote down the number, her heart thumping. She'd ring him first thing in the morning.
Twenty-three
Sunday 3rd April, 10.15 a.m.
Frankfurt
'Hotel Sommer. Guten Tag.'
'Good morning, room 313 please.' Lorna hoped the tremble in her voice wasn't too noticeable.
'Zimmer drethundert dreizehn. Ein Moment bitte.'
Not five star, she deduced from the telephonist's lack of English.
'Hello?' Alex's voice.
'Is that Alex?' she asked, unnecessarily.
'Lorna?'
'Sure. I got a message from Bella. What've you been saying to her? She sounds real turned on!'
'I was beginning to think she was keeping it to herself,' he laughed nervously.
'Hmm ... So what are you doing here, truly?' she asked, still playing dumb.
'Truly - I've come to see you. Where are you?'
'It's a place called Pfefferheim. It's where Vildana's new family live.'
'Is she okay? Does she look happy?'
'Everything's great so far. She can say "more please" in fluent English!'
Alex laughed.
'So, shall I come out there?'
'No . . .' she answered hesitantly. 'But I tell you what. I've a couple of hours free today. Why don't I come downtown. Leave these good people on their own for a while. Name a restaurant and you can buy me lunch.'
She heard a clonking of the phone at the other end while he wrestled with something.
just looking in the guide book. There's a place here that sounds okay. It's called Bistro Tagtraum which means "daydream". Sound suitable?'
'Do they do vegetarian?'
'Potato and ginger soup.'
'Okay. Give me the address and I'll see you there at 12.30.'
11.35 a.m.
Autobalm A4 - the road from Berlin to Frankfurt
They'd been on the road since eight. The five-year-old VW Polo was Gisela's car, and she was driving, because Milan had never learned how.
He had told her nothing about his meeting with the computer man. just telephoned her at four in the morning to insist she drive him to Frankfurt.
She had protested, but hadn't refused. She knew what he was capable of, remembering what he'd done to clients who'd got rough with her in the old days.
He'd hardly spoken on the journey. just sat there beside her, staring at the road ahead, holding onto the handles of a sports bag wedged between his feet. They'd stopped once for petrol and to use the toilets, but that was all. Questions about why they were going to Frankfurt had been answered with silence.
He'd taken her hostage. Not with chains ' but with the unspoken threat of violence if she refused to do what he said.
She was an emotional hostage too. Despite his weird behaviour since returning to Germany, she felt strangely sorry for someone so clearly in torment.
Iran
Hamid Akhavi was lifted from the ambulance onto a stretcher trolley and wheeled into the small, two-ward hospital. The physician who'd ordered him to be brought there from his home was a worried man. His medical facilities at the desert site were minimal. Above all, he had no pathology laboratory.
A sample of Akhavi's blood was already on its way to the hospital at Yazd, to be cultured overnight. Perhaps then he might have some idea what this illness was that had struck down one of the most important scientists in Iran.
Overnight Akhavi's cough had worsened further. By first light there were specks of blood in his sputum. His last words to his wife before the ambulance arrived had been to beg her to contact his sister in Tehran to tell her what was happening to him.
They were cut off from the outside world at the desert site. No personal phone calls permitted. To ring her sister-in-law, she would have to arrange to be driven to the PIT in Yazd. She didn't quite trust Hamid's sister, always suspecting she was more political than was good for her. Political in that she had contacts with Iranians abroad, Iranians who called themselves the Resistance.
Ealing, West London
Martin Sanders lived alone in an immaculately decorated, two-bedroomed, Victorian terrace cottage within a stone's throw of Ealing Green and the Underground station.
His well-travelled looks ensured he was never short of female company when he wanted it. But having any of the delightful creatures actually living in and interfering with the way he did things was out of the question and always would be.
The phone call from Rudi Katzfuss had been unexpected and had interrupted the preparation of the entrecéte au beurre d'olives that he'd decided to cook for lunch. They'd never had to summon an emergency meeting of the Ramblers before.
The BND man hadn't said over the phone what it was about of course, but insisted they assemble on Monday evening in Munich. Couldn't be sooner because of the time it would take Jack Kapinsky to get over from Washington.
Before he went, Sanders would
check with the photographic branch and get some copies of the photos he'd brought back from Zagreb. Might be useful.
Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen
Alex had telephoned the restaurant to book a table, and arrived to claim it ten minutes early. He ordered a little jug of Mosel. By the time Lorna joined him ten minutes late, he'd ordered another.
'Sorry,' she breathed, allowing him to kiss her on the cheek, 'couldn't find anywhere to park.'
She was wearing fawn chinos and a white shirt, covered by a knitted waistcoat in olive-green. Round her neck was a long, thin gold chain. The waiter brought Mosel for her too.
'This looks nice,' she offered, looking round at the simple decor, and the menu chalked on a board. The trouble was she doubted she'd be able to eat, the way her stomach was churning.
'You look nice too,' Alex bubbled. 'In fact you look just as fantastic as the first time we met.' Nerves always made him go big on compliments.
'Maybe you should get your eyes checked,' she smiled, putting her hands up to cover the lines on her face. She kept glancing away, not trusting herself to look into the bottomless darkness of his eyes.
'Did ... did your office pass on my message?' Alex asked. 'All of it, I mean.'
'I don't know what all of it was,' she shrugged, feigning ignorance.
'The bit that said "I love you"?'
'Oh, that old thing,' she joked. There was an edge to her voice. 'Sure.
But don't worry, I didn't take it seriously. I try not to fall for the same trick twice.'
Alex felt his face redden. Maybe it was still war and she had come here to twist the knife.
'Why don't we order some food,' he suggested quickly. 'Then we can start this conversation all over again.'
Lorna dabbed at her hair with her finger tips as she looked up at the blackboard. She was still at war, but the battle was inside her own head.
She chose the soul) and a spinach and goat's cheese lasagna. Alex went for the same. The waiter moved off.
'So. ..' Alex said, fumbling for a place to begin. He pulled out his cigarettes, then remembered he'd reserved a non-smoking table for her sake. He put them back in his pocket.
'So...?'
He took a deep breath.
'Would it help if I said "sorry" for what happened in Belfast? Like an official apology?'
She chewed her lip. She felt as if she were caught in quicksand.
'I don't know whether it'll help. But I guess it's nice to hear you say it. If you mean it,' she added a little too pathetically.
She'd been through a lot, he could see it clearly sitting across the table from her like this. She wore the vulnerability of someone not sure where the next punch was coming from.
'Tell you what,' he suggested, 'why don't we pretend we've never met before?'
Her look said 'you have to be kidding'.
'Hi. My name's Alex Crawford,' he began, smiling theatrically.
There was a gleam in his eye which made Lorna suspect this was a game she was not going to enjoy.
'I'm aged ... oh, somewhere in the middle of life,' he continued. 'I was born Alex Jarvis, but it's been Crawford for twenty years, for reasons beyond my control. I've been married for eighteen of those years. We've lived in Scotland.'
At the revelation of a wife her eyelids flickered. A good sign, he decided.
'Her name is Kirsty. She was a widow when I met her. She'd been married for just three years to her first husband, then he died in a climbing accident.'
He took a deep breath.
'Now it's your turn.'
'I'm not sure I'm up to truth games,' she told him huskily. 'If that's what this is?'
'If you refuse to play, it means I have the right to ask you questions,' he pressed.
The waiter thumped soup bowls in front of them.
'Okay. So what d'you want me to say?' she boxed, desperate for him to reveal more than she did.
'Tell me about Mister Sorensen.'
'Oh, that. Well ... after I got back from Belfast twenty years ago, I found there were some nasty men who wanted to kill me? You know the sort of guys I mean?
Well, they got paid some money to lay off, but I had to go hide someplace, like you. You may remember I was a qualified attorney already, and somebody fixed me a job at a practice in a small New England town called Shelburne Falls.'
Alex saw anger flicker in her eyes. He guessed why. 'Somebody' would have been her father, the man whose influence she'd spent much of her life trying to escape.
'And there I met a guy called Rees Sorensen, who was one of the partners in the firm where I worked. We got married. We lived in a white-painted, clapboard house with maple trees in the yard, and I had a daughter called Julie. Now you,' she concluded. 'Your turn again.'
Too brief for him. Too sanitized.
'Is Rees still around?'
'No,' she said flatly. 'Leastways, not around me. And that was cheating.'
He smiled, but only for an instant. The hard part lay ahead. It felt like walking into a tunnel not knowing what time the next train was due.
'Well ... what else shall I tell you?' he swallowed. 'Um ... Kirsty, she had a child, by her first husband. A boy ... called Jodie. And I helped her bring him up. He was a lovely lad. I thought of him as my son.
Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, he was killed ... There was an accident -his first parachute jump. His mother believed it was my fault for letting him do it, so she turned her back on me . Which is one reason I ended up in Bosma.'
Lorna swallowed. She could see it was no trick this time. The pain in his eyes reached out like floodwater.
'I'm so sorry,' she heard herself say.
She'd wanted him to be punished, and now she knew he had been, but in a way more devastating than she could ever have wished.
'Now you,' he insisted. He wanted to know everything, to lay the whole past out in the open, so they could put it behind them.
She dipped into her soup, not ready to say more.
'You still love Kirsty?' she pressed.
'Now who's cheating...' He took a deep breath. 'The answer's yes, but there's love and love, isn't there. Kirsty and I just happened to need what each other could give ... at the time we met.'
It had sounded callous, but he could see she knew only too well what he meant.
'Tell me about Julie.' He saw a cloud pass over her eyes.
Lorna felt she was fighting for breath. In the past she'd blamed him for all the disasters in her life, but she couldn't any more. Not now she knew what he himself had been through. She bit her lip and steeled herself
Julie's thirteen. She's autistic - can't relate to anybody. I gave up my job to look after her and managed it until the beginning of last year, but it was real hard. She was like a ... some sort of porcelain figure under a glass dome, you know? I could look at her, I could touch the glass, but I couldn't reach her.'
She chewed her lip again.
Julie never learned to talk. A couple of years back she began to develop, physically. All the same feelings as a normal kid in puberty, but didn't know what to do with them. She got so moody and hollered all the time, I couldn't handle it any more. Rees - he wasn't Julie's real father, but that didn't matter to him -- well, he decided to put her in a home for the handicapped.'
She grimaced, close to tears.
'It broke me up. It broke us up too. Rees and I split.'
Alex expelled the breath he'd been holding. Strange parallels in their lives.
'That's terrible. I'm so sorry. She's still in the home?'
'Oh yes. As happy as she'll ever be.' Her fingers twisted and untwisted the gold chain round her neck. I always carry around with me a few things that were hers. Like this chain. And her passport.
That's why I had it with me in Bosnia.'
'I wondered.'
Suddenly she sat up straight and folded her arms.
'You know something?' she remarked. 'This is a pretty heavy conversation for people who've only just met, You treat a
ll your women like this?'
'No. Only the vegetarians.'
She laughed. Inside, she was smiling.
2.05 p.m.
South of Frankfurt
Milan Pravic had the map spread across his knees and told Gisela to take the next turning from the Autobahn. Pfefferheirn was just a few kilometres away.
'What do we do when we get there, Milanchen?' Gisela asked for the third time. 'I'm really tired, I tell you.'
Still no answer. He was looking for signposts.
Gisela was certain of one thing -- whatever Pravic had in mind to do in Pfefferheim it was evil. Somebody was going to get hurt.
For the last two hours it had been raining. Pools of water lay in the uneven side road as they drove through pinewoods towards the village.
'Stop! Stop here,' Pravic barked suddenly. He pointed to the right, where a muddy track led to a clearing in the trees. Gisela swung the wheel and they bounced to a halt.
'Why're we stopping?' she asked, irrationally fearing he'd decided to kill her.
'Further a little. Away from the road. . .' he gestured. Her fears grew.
'Why, Milan? What for?' she wailed.
'Here. Here is okay.'
Gisela looked over her shoulder. They were invisible from the road. Pravic got out and walked to a point where the ground was particularly soft. He dug his fingers into the earth and returned with a handful of dirt. Then he crouched down at the front of the car, smeared some onto the number plate, then took the rest to the rear to repeat the process.
He stood back and inspected his work. Satisfied, he wiped his hands on the grass, and got back into the car.
A few minutes later they passed the sign marking the village boundary.
Scorpion Trail Page 25