After Zyster carried his luggage and dinner into the room, Soul decided to give him a half-hour to settle in for the night. Then, his own stomach rumbling, he drove back to the McDonald’s and gorged. He knew he’d been very lucky not to have been spotted, so after finishing his meal he found a ski shop and bought a ski rack to put on his car. Just about every car he saw had a rack. If he had to follow Zyster around locally, it might provide enough cover. He decided against skis. There wasn’t enough time. Besides, the penny-pinchers in Mossad accounting would have a hernia. He drove past Zyster’s motel. The car was still there. Soul wasn’t prepared to spend the night in his own car, so he drove down the road and found another motel. After checking in, he set his alarm for dawn and fell into an exhausted sleep.
Now he, Etan Soul, ace of the Mossad, was freezing his balls off on a hillside in Vermont wondering about the man Zyster had met in the lodge a few hours earlier. He felt a snowflake hit his nose. Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful. He wanted to kill the pervert doctor just for making him so miserable.
***
Boltke glanced out the window. It was beginning to snow. Good.
“Listen, Erik. I’m not a writer. Besides, what do you need me for?”
“I am not exactly Heinrich Böll or Thomas Mann either, Rudolph. We will probably have an editor assigned to us by the publishing house. But I need you to back up my story. Corroboration will be important. You were a respected military officer. You will lend needed weight to the narrative.”
“How do you intend to go about finding a publisher?”
“We will need an agent. Or maybe we can go directly to a publishing house in New York. That’s where most of the big ones are.”
Boltke’s mind was reeling. He could imagine the scene. “Hello. We are two Nazi war criminals. We would like to write a book about UFOs.” They wouldn’t be jailed. They’d be clapped in an insane asylum.
He pretended to consider the proposition.
“You really think it will be a bestseller and make a lot of money?”
“Without a doubt.”
Boltke decided that he shouldn’t suddenly appear too enthusiastic.
“Could we use pseudonyms?”
“I thought of that. But our real names would get out eventually. They always do. And I think the very fact that we are willing to use our own names will add credence to our tale, don’t you?”
And years to our sentences, Boltke thought.
“I suppose you are right, Eric. But we can talk about that over dinner. I don’t know about you, but I am hungry. All that skiing, you know.”
“Yes, I could use some food. My dinner last night was very unsatisfying. I stopped at some place with a big arch in front. It was filled with screaming children. I bolted down some sort of meat patty on a bun. I was ill most of the evening. Haven’t had anything since. What I wouldn’t give for a good German meal.”
Boltke was by now used to American food and eating habits and actually liked McDonald’s. But he saw his opening.
“Then you are in luck. Why don’t we drive over to Stowe for dinner? It is a popular resort, with some fine restaurants, better than we have locally. There is even a wonderful Austrian restaurant. I happen to know that the von Trapps frequent the place. And, of course, we could even eat at the von Trapp lodge. I often do.”
Zyster looked surprised.
“You know the von Trapps?”
“Not well, but yes.”
“Isn’t that dangerous.”
Boltke laughed good-naturedly.
“This from a man who wants to publish a book about our wartime exploits. You forget, I am Walter Bannion, respected member of the community, with many Jewish friends now. Hiding in plain sight is often the best way. Come. Finish your drink. Leave some room for wine, perhaps a good Riesling. Both that restaurant and the von Trapps have fine cellars.”
Zyster knocked back his scotch and got to his feet a little unsteadily.
“I hope they have a good wiener schnitzel.”
Boltke was relieved. The man was obviously unaware that the road to Stowe was closed by snowdrifts in the winter.
Zyster picked up the attaché case.
“Why don’t you leave that here? It will be safe.”
The doctor shook his head.
“Where I go, it goes.”
“Suit yourself.”
***
From his perch, Etan Soul watched Zyster and the other man get into the jeep-like vehicle. Zyster was carrying that small case he’d spotted earlier.
Soul sprinted down the hill to where his own car was parked and was just able to see the jeep turn toward Stowe on Rte. 108. He was surprised, having expected them to head back to the Madonna ski area. The road to Stowe, he knew, was closed. Perhaps they were visiting someone else. Maybe he’d uncovered a Nazi cell in Vermont. But something didn’t feel right.
Soul followed at a discreet distance, a tail made easier by the snowfall, which was picking up. He soon realized that the men were not visiting anyone, as the road rose and then dipped into a forested area where they were no houses. He slowed and put more distance between the vehicles. He also turned off his lights. It was scary driving, but at least he could make out the brake lights of his quarry. Finally, he realized that they had stopped and so did he.
Soul got out and took out his binoculars. Even in the dusky light he could see that the road ahead was completely blocked by huge drifts, some 20 feet high. What the hell was going on?
***
“Damn it,” Boltke said, feigning frustration, “I thought they had plowed this road.”
“That looks like a lot of snow,” Zyster said. “How often do they plow?’
“Not often enough, I guess.”
“There doesn’t seem to be this much snow back in Jeffersonville.”
The idiot doesn’t realize that what he was seeing was the accumulation of an entire winter, Boltke thought.
“It snows more on this side of the mountains,” he lied. “What rotten luck. We’ll have to turn around.”
Boltke got out and made a show of looking behind the jeep. Then he walked over to the passenger side and tapped on the window. Zyster rolled it down.
“Do me a favor, Erik. I think I have enough room to turn around, but the road is narrow. Can you stand behind the jeep and warn me if I’m getting too close to the gully?”
“Of course.”
Zyster got out and started to walk to the rear of the Land Cruiser.
“Oh, Erik.”
Zyster turned. Boltke took out his Luger and shot him in the ear.
“Let’s see you get out of this deep freeze, you little shit.”
***
Soul watched the two men get out of the jeep. Then he saw the other man raise his arm. Even though the trees and snow cover muffled the shot, the Mossad agent heard it clearly and watched in disbelief as Zyster fell sideways on to the road. What the hell? Who was the other man? Another assassin? One of Zyster’s victims, or a relative of one, who finally caught up with him? But they had seemed so friendly. One thing was for sure, Soul wasn’t going to let the killer get away without an explanation.
He saw the man grab Zyster’s feet and start to drag the body down into the gully. He got in his car and turned it sideways on the road to block any escape. Then he removed his Jericho automatic from the glove compartment and screwed on a silencer, more out of habit than anything else. There was presumably no one else within miles and he’d barely heard the un-silenced shot that killed Zyster.
Soul walked back toward the other car. By the time he reached it, the other man was just making his way back up to the road, his eyes down, intent on his footing.
“Hands up,” Soul said.
Boltke looked up to see a tough-looking, dark-haired man with what looked to be a two-day growth of beard standing by his car pointing a silenced pistol at him. He did as he was told.
“Now, walk toward me and turn around. Slowly.”
Soul patte
d him down. He didn’t have a weapon.
“Where’s the gun?”
“What gun?”
Using his free hand, Soul expertly punched Boltke in his back, at the kidney. Grunting, he fell to his knees.
“The gun you just shot Zyster with.”
The man caught his breath and said, “Down there with him.”
“Stand up.” Soul shoved his captive in the back and they headed down the slope. “Show me.”
A minute later they came upon Zyster slumped against a tree, the Luger in his hand.
“You staged it as a suicide? Is that supposed to fool anyone?”
“They won’t find him until the thaw. By that time the animals will have worked on him. And they may never find him.”
“Who are you?” Soul asked.
“Walter Bannion.”
Soul smiled.
“I meant, who were you before Walter Bannion? Even if you didn’t use a Luger, I can smell a Nazi a mile away.”
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“Mossad.”
The look on the man’s face, a combination of fear and resignation, told Soul all he needed to know.
“Now, are you going to tell me who you are? Or do I have to start alternating bullets in your knees and elbows. You see, I’m not worried about staging a suicide.”
Boltke laughed harshly.
“You were after Zyster, and he led you to me. The stupid fool. He thought we would be heroes because of what we knew about the aliens. Stupid little pervert. It’s so unfair. I’ve built a life for myself. I even have Jewish friends. But that won’t matter to you people.” He paused. “I guess if I was in your shoes it wouldn’t matter to me, either.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Boltke didn’t answer. Instead he reached down and grabbed a handful of snow and threw it into Soul’s face. And charged him. The “thut” of the silenced round from the Mossad agent’s pistol was further muffled by the forested snow cover. The former SS Colonel managed to reach Soul and grab his jacket. He looked into his eyes and said, “So unfair.” Then he slowly slid to the ground and flopped on his side. Soul reached down and felt his neck.
“Shit.”
***
Soul hoped the man who called himself “Bannion” was right about the possibility that bodies in that part of the mountain pass might never be found. Or, if found, the corpses would be so ravaged by animals and nature they would leave few forensic traces. He wasn’t too worried. He could be out of the country in a day or so. But there was no sense in making it easy for the American authorities. The car keys were still in the ignition of the stranger’s car. Soul drove it back to where he’d left his own vehicle, a good half mile up the road. If there was a search for its owner, it would undoubtedly be concentrated in that area.
It was snowing heavily now. Soon the bodies and any footprints at the kill site would be covered over. Even if Zyster and his murderer were found, all the police would have on their hands was a mystery.
Soul almost missed the attaché case in the back seat of the killer’s car. On an impulse, he took it with him when he drove back to the house he had staked out. The Mossad agent knew he should leave the area as quickly, but he was curious. He went into the house and opened the case. It was chock full of neatly typed reports and written diaries. Everything was in German, a language for which Soul had limited facility. There was a separate envelope with strips of film negatives. He held some of them up to a light and frowned. “Bannion” had said something about “aliens” and the images on the negatives certainly looked strange. But Soul knew of Zyster’s macabre experiments at Verblinka. God only knows what the madman did to people. He closed the case. He’d leave it to Mossad’s scientific unit to figure it all out.
Soul spent the next two hours tearing apart the house, looking for evidence of its owner’s real identity. He came up empty until he came across an unmailed letter with a South American address. There was also an extensive stamp collection. Soul didn’t know anything about stamps and was tempted to leave them. But even to his untrained eye some of them looked valuable. Mossad was always short of funds. He decided to take them. He found a large suitcase and threw the stamps, the letter and the attaché case into it.
Before leaving he searched the car Zyster had driven. He took the rental papers he found. The name on them meant nothing to him, and was undoubtedly false, but might provide a lead to Zyster’s network in South America. He wondered what would happen to the car. He presumed “Bannion” would have ditched it someplace, perhaps in another town. The authorities, if they found it, might start a search for whoever rented it. Perhaps the bodies would be found. Certainly the disappearance of Bannion would be noticed. It would be one hell of a mystery for the police to handle. He shrugged.
“Not my worry,” he said aloud.
A slight movement in the woods startled Soul. His hand went to his weapon. But it was only a deer. A large doe. The animal stared at him, poised for flight. He smiled.
“I bet you don’t care, either.”
He walked to his car. When he looked back, the deer was gone.
***
Two days later, Soul walked into the Israeli Consulate on 2nd Avenue in New York City carrying the large suitcase. It, and he, landed in Tel Aviv the next day.
CHAPTER 5 - THE HILTON SISTERS
National Security Agency - Fort Meade, Maryland - Present Day
The National Security Agency, through its U.S. Cyber Command and Central Security Service, intercepts the telephone and Internet communications of more than one billion people worldwide.
Even the N.S.A.’s critics had no problem with its efforts in seeking information on terrorists after 9/11. In one of its many coups, the N.S.A. listened, by satellite, to more than 30 hours of Osama bin Laden’s cell phone conversations in Afghanistan. Its work in thwarting further attacks on the American homeland are well-documented. And nobody seriously objects to the N.S.A. keeping tabs on China, Russia and rogue nations like North Korea.
But the ultra-secret agency’s capabilities had increased exponentially in recent years, helped by the latest array of supercomputers. The N.S.A., as all Government bureaucracies are wont to do, expanded its purview to target numerous governments worldwide, including allies and trading partners. Its domestic capabilities have created a political firestorm, ever since it was revealed that its cyber analysts track, in the United States, the locations of hundreds of millions of mobile phones daily and tap into the databases and communications systems of all the major Internet players, including, among others, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube and AOL, collecting and collating hundreds of millions of email and instant messaging accounts.
Much as teletype operators could be identified by their unique “fists” during the days of Morse code, cyber transmissions often had telltale variations in signal strength, frequency modulation and band width that allows computers to spot anomalies that the sharpest humans would miss. The supercomputers in the N.S.A.’s Cyber Threat Analysis Section (CTAS) perform trillions of calculations per second, comparing millions of message units against other millions, looking for electronic “fists”. The system is so sophisticated that these billions of electronic bits (or bytes) are almost instantly sorted into various “Priority” folders and routed to appropriate destinations, some involving humans.
Most of the cyber chatter — normal telephone communications, aircraft and ship communications, civilian emails, radio and TV transmissions, and the like — is worthless from an intelligence perspective, and is quickly labeled “PRIORITY 4” and discarded. Well, not really discarded. Despite continual concern, and legal challenges, about privacy and civil rights, the N.S.A. merely buries PRIORITY 4 material somewhere in its computers, where it could easily be retrieved if need be. One reason the agency rarely had trouble getting funding from Congress was the fact that certain legislators know about the electronic reams of Priority 4 chatter, some of which could prove embarra
ssing during an election campaign if it fell in the wrong hands. N.S.A. insiders informally refer to this cache of information as the RDF, or “Rainy Day File”.
One step up from the RDF are Priority 3 communications, culled from nations and individuals considered friendly to the United States, but who bear watching.
Priority 2 chatter comes from nations and individuals that are perceived as enemies, military or economic.
Priority 2 and 3 material is triaged by humans, who decide how seriously the information should be taken.
Then there is Priority 1. When the computers spit out a Priority 1, everyone takes notice. Those kinds of communications or conversations could signal a planned or imminent attack on American interests. Priority one traffic goes straight up the chain of command, to the N.S.A. bigwigs, and both the C.I.A. and F.B.I.
Strangely enough, there is another level within Priority 1 — Priority 1(A). A message or communication kicked out as a Priority 1(A) was not routed to the Pentagon, C.I.A. or F.B.I. It went only to “The White House, President’s Eyes Only”.
***
Laurie Gibbons was one of the N.S.A.’s wunderkinds, heavily recruited from Silicon Valley, where she ran the cyber unit of a private company that provided security software for large corporations fighting a constant and losing battle against Internet hackers (including those who worked for the N.S.A.!). Gibbons, an attractive woman with an easy smile, now ran CTAS. Her bosses had given her the highest security clearance in the N.S.A., as an acknowledgment of both her patriotic loyalty and the fact that she probably could have broken into the agency’s computers at will, anyway.
Gibbons had taken a huge pay cut to go to work for the Government, although she had enough stock from her old company so that she would never have to worry about money. She loved her new job, and its stresses and responsibilities. She had the final say on what to do with information marked Priority 2 and 1, between which there was often a very thin line, and had earned a reputation for not becoming flustered by even the most alarming communications the CTAS computers discovered.
TWO SUDDEN!: A Pair of Cole Sudden C.I.A. Thrillers Page 18