by Brad Thor
Harvath waited until the man had left the kitchen and then went to work on the back door.
Once he had the lock picked, he opened it slowly. The house wasn’t that big and Strobl was probably in the other room, where he had seen the TV glowing.
He stepped inside and gently closed the door behind him. There was half a bottle of wine on the counter. Beside it were the remnants of packaging for a microwavable meal. From the next room, he could hear music. It was a very old recording. It took him a minute to recognize the singer. Sarah Vaughan.
He took out his Glock and moved slowly, quietly toward it.
At the edge of the kitchen he could see the glow from the other room. Three steps more and he realized that it wasn’t coming from a TV. It was coming from three, long, flat-screen computer monitors arrayed in a semi-arc on a long table in the den.
Sitting in front of them was a man who looked nothing like the file photo Harvath had seen. Jörg Strobl was thin and frail, a shadow of his former self. In his left hand was a glass of red wine. His eyes were closed as he listened to Vaughan singing “Don’t Blame Me.”
“Interesting choice,” Harvath said, scaring the hell out of the man.
Strobl dropped his glass of wine and it shattered on the floor.
He spun his wheelchair to face him. “Who are you?” he demanded.
Harvath raised his index finger to his lips. “Where’s Anna?”
“What do you want with Anna?”
“Where is she?” he repeated.
“I don’t know.”
Harvath didn’t believe him. “Last chance,” he said, leveling the pistol at his chest.
“She’s at work.”
“When will she be home?”
The man shrugged. “She should have been home an hour ago. Sometimes she goes out with her colleagues.”
“She doesn’t call you?”
Strobl used the joystick to move his wheelchair toward his intruder.
“That’s close enough,” Harvath warned him.
“Who are you and what do you want with Anna?” the man asked again.
“I didn’t come for Anna. I came for you, Herr Strobl.”
“For me? Why for me?”
“You have been handling travel arrangements for a very dangerous man.”
“A very dangerous man,” Strobl replied with a laugh. “You obviously have made a mistake.”
“I don’t make mistakes,” Harvath said. “You’re the man I’m looking for and you know exactly why I’m here.”
“I wish I could help you, but I cannot.”
“You can help me and you will.”
“I am calling the police,” Strobl stated, turning his chair and moving back toward his desk.
Harvath grabbed a handful of the wheelchair’s electrical cable and tore it out. The machine came to an immediate halt.
“You’re making me angry, Jörg.”
“And you have the wrong man!” he insisted, raising his voice. “I want you to go. Now!”
“Not until you tell me everything I want to know.”
“I know nothing,” the man said, averting his gaze.
“Jörg, the more you lie to me, the worse this is going to get. Believe me. Your condition will not win you any special treatment. You have been aiding and abetting a killer. I want the details. All of them.”
Strobl was preparing to speak, but was interrupted.
“I want the details too,” said another voice.
Looking up, Harvath saw Anna Strobl standing in the doorway. She had a pistol and it was pointed right at him.
CHAPTER 15
Anna Strobl wasn’t a great cop, but she wasn’t a bad one either. Like anything else in life, police work had everything to do with timing, and instinct.
On her way home, she had decided to get fuel. Up ahead, she had noticed a car slow down in front of her house. It didn’t stop, but whoever was driving had taken a good, long look at her property before driving off. It was enough to raise her antennae.
After passing her home, the car had returned to a normal speed and turned the corner. She watched and let it drive away.
Even if she had been driving an official Bundespolizei vehicle with lights and sirens, rather than her personal vehicle, she still would have needed more in order to justify a stop.
Returning from the filling station, she was still bothered by the car’s actions. She decided to take a roundabout way home and look for it. She found it parked in front of a church, two blocks from her house. The driver was nowhere to be seen. Something was going on.
One of the neighbors was traveling and had asked Anna to keep an eye on their house. She parked in their driveway and made her way through the backyards until she got to her own. There was no sign of anything wrong, but her gut told her otherwise.
When she found her back door unlocked, she drew her weapon, slipped off her boots, and crept inside.
She had heard the entire conversation. What bothered her even more than the intruder’s knowing her name was that Jörg wasn’t even a good liar.
“Drop your weapon,” she told the man holding her husband at gunpoint.
“You first,” Harvath replied.
Anna leaned her shoulder forward so he could see the patch. “Bundespolizei,” she said. “More officers are on the way. Drop your weapon. Now.”
“No thanks. I’ll wait until they get here.”
“I am not asking you. I am ordering you. Do it now.”
Harvath looked at the man in the wheelchair. “My superiors know everything, Jörg. They know why I’m here and what you’ve done. If the Bundespolizei become involved, it’s over for you.”
“What is it you know, exactly?” Anna asked.
“Ask your husband.”
She looked at Jörg, and for several moments he refused to meet her eyes. Finally, he said, “Everything I did was for you.”
“What did you do?”
“I wanted to make sure you were taken care of.”
“What did you do?” she repeated.
“It’s nothing. Only a small thing.”
“Tell me, Jörg. Now.”
He was beaten, ashamed. He cast his eyes down toward the floor. “I manipulated some of the crew rosters.”
“Why?”
“For money. So that you could have the things that you need when I am gone.”
Anna didn’t understand. “You took money from crew members?” she replied. “For what? To arrange the trips they wanted? More vacation time?”
“If that’s all this was,” said Harvath, “I wouldn’t be here.”
“Tell me why this man is here, Jörg.”
“I told you. I accepted money to manipulate the rosters.”
Anna looked from her husband to Harvath. She still didn’t understand. Harvath laid it out for her. “He took money to help an assassin travel undetected by international law enforcement.”
“I had no idea that—” he sputtered.
“How much?” she interrupted.
“Anna, you have to believe me that I—”
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand euros.”
“My God,” she responded. “Two hundred thousand Euros and you had no idea, what? That it was wrong? That criminals would be involved?”
“I am dying!” he yelled. “I did this for you.”
“Do not blame me. You did this for yourself, because you feel guilty. I don’t need money.”
Jörg Strobl laughed. “And your new car? The expensive van that accommodates my wheelchair? Where do you think those came from?”
“You told me you were doing IT work on the side.”
“And now you know the truth.”
Anna fished the car key fob from her pocket and threw it at h
er husband. He couldn’t get his hands up fast enough to catch it. The fob hit him in the chest and landed in his lap.
There was an uncomfortable silence as the Strobls stared at each other.
Harvath didn’t have time to stand around while they worked out their issues. “How were you approached?” he asked. “Who pays you? How do you get contacted?”
Strobl looked at his wife, who holstered her weapon. “I think you should answer him,” she stated. Then, turning to Harvath she said, “There are no Bundespolizei officers coming.”
Harvath hadn’t thought so. He had been taught how to pick out microexpressions, the little tics people subconsciously give off when they weren’t telling the truth. She was a very good liar. Her tic was almost imperceptible.
“If I talk,” Jörg said to Harvath, “they’ll kill me. If I don’t talk, you’ll kill me. I don’t see any upside in any of this.”
“If you talk, I’ll protect you. You and Anna.”
That was a wrinkle Jörg hadn’t expected. He thought about that for a moment. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t.”
Jörg shook his head. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Which is how I am able to protect you,” Harvath replied. “Now, either you start talking, or I am leaving and taking any hope you and your wife ever have of safety with me. Your choice.”
Looking up at Anna, Strobl asked, “Will you please pour us some wine?”
CHAPTER 16
BAHNHOFSVIERTEL
FRANKFURT
The neighborhood known as Bahnhofsviertel included the main railway station, as well as Frankfurt’s red light district. It also included the apartment of the man who had recruited Jörg Strobl.
Harvath didn’t need or want Anna Strobl there, but she had insisted. She had also made a strong case for being able to authenticate the information that he hoped to extract.
Sigmar Eichel worked in airport operations. And as such, he had access to terminals, runways, hangars, and every other facet of Frankfurt airport. He could move in and out of secure areas without arousing suspicion. He knew all of the security protocols, which cameras were working, and which were down. Anna also commented that he likely could access and even alter the CCTV feeds.
An added benefit of having Anna along was that she was a federal police officer. As soon as Sigmar saw her, he was going to know that it was all over for him. The trick would be in convincing him to turn against the people he was working for.
Harvath hadn’t expected the Russians to deal directly with Jörg Strobl. They didn’t need to. They would use a go-between, or a cutout, as it was known. That was Eichel’s job. He passed along the instructions and Strobl carried them out.
Eichel was higher up the food chain. As such, he would have had more training, and likely more to lose. That meant that he might end up being a harder nut to crack.
Strobl had explained that he had gotten to know Eichel back when he had been working out of the Lufthansa Aviation Center. As Strobl opened up to Harvath about his medical condition, Harvath knew almost exactly how the story of his recruitment would unfold.
Shortly after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Eichel had begun bumping into Jörg in different places, both at work and outside the airport. It didn’t happen often, but it happened often enough.
Soon, the pair had struck up a friendship and were getting together for beers after work and occasionally doing things on the weekend. It usually happened, though, when Anna was on duty. She had only met Eichel once or twice.
Figuring that as a cop, she must have had a halfway decent bullshit detector, Harvath had asked her what she thought of him. Her assessment didn’t disappoint.
Physically, Anna remembered Eichel as being overweight and having poor eyesight and dry skin. He dressed like a man who didn’t have a woman in his life and didn’t want one. Personality-wise, he had an overinflated opinion of both his talent and his worth to the airport. His jokes were chauvinistic and not very clever.
To top it all off, Anna detailed that Eichel wore a corrective shoe on his left foot and that his left leg was probably shorter than his right. She commented that because of this, Eichel may have been teased as a child and have subsequently developed poor self-esteem, which resulted in his disagreeable personality and lack of interest in maintaining his physical appearance.
As a final postscript, Anna noted that Eichel might just have been born an asshole, and therefore everything else was simply peripheral.
Harvath had tried not to smile, but couldn’t help it. She had rendered an amazingly insightful assessment and was keenly observant.
Though Harvath was tempted to ask why she had missed so many things about her own husband, he didn’t go there. While love could often be blind, the debilitating illness of a loved one was a no-holds-barred cage match. The blows came so fast and so furious that you were lucky to survive, much less grasp everything that was going on around you.
To expect someone in the middle of an emotional tsunami to sense subtle shifts in their spouse and not chalk it up to the illness was beyond insane. Every day was a new battle. Every day you expected the unexpected. Harvath didn’t blame Anna. Having been on her side of the equation before, he felt for her.
“You’re not married?” she asked.
He was standing at the window of Eichel’s dingy apartment near the Kaiserstrasse, waiting for him to come home.
“No,” Harvath replied. “I’m not married.”
“Why not?”
He smiled. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t like women?”
He laughed. “No, I like women. That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m married to my job, I suppose.”
Anna shook her head. “That’s ridiculous.”
“My work is important to me.”
Before leaving the house in Oberursel, Anna had changed out of her uniform into jeans, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket. Peeling off the leather jacket, she set it on the arm of the sofa and approached him.
“Do you have a woman now?” she asked.
Harvath heard alarm bells going off somewhere in the back of his mind. He’d had more than a few women. Many had walked out without even closing the door. “I’m not sure,” he replied.
“What does that mean?”
“We are going to be living in separate cities.”
“But you live in the same city now?”
“No.”
Anna looked at him.
“It’s complicated,” Harvath conceded.
She held his gaze and was about to reply when Harvath signaled for her to be quiet.
He had heard something. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 17
Eichel kicked the door shut behind him, threw his keys in a bowl on the dining room table, and dropped a large bag of takeout food onto the coffee table.
He hung his coat on a peg near the door and then walked into the kitchen. There was the sound of a fridge and a cabinet door being opened then closed. He returned to the living room with a tall glass and a large bottle of beer.
As soon as he had made himself comfortable on the couch, Harvath stepped from the bedroom.
Eichel almost had a coronary. “Scheisse!” he gasped.
Harvath pointed his Glock at him and told him to shut up.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“I’m here to talk with you about Peter Roth.”
“I don’t know any Peter Roth,” said Eichel.
Harvath smiled. “That’s not what Jörg Strobl told me.”
“I don’t know any Jörg Strobl.”
“So that’s how this is going to go. Fine by me.”
Eichel watched as Ha
rvath produced a roll of duct tape and approached the couch. The man was already perspiring, his heart beating rapidly. “You can’t do this!” he exclaimed.
“I am doing this.”
“Just tell me what you want.”
“I did,” Harvath said, “but you decided you wanted to play games. That’s fine by me. I like games.”
“I am a German citizen. You cannot do this to me.”
The fat man seemed hardly in a position to be telling anyone what he could or could not be doing.
When Harvath tried to secure his wrists, Eichel resisted, so he punched him in the mouth.
Tears immediately formed in the man’s eyes. “Why?” he moaned.
“You know why. And you should also know that this is only going to get more painful the more you resist me. Do you understand?”
Eichel didn’t reply, so Harvath struck him again.
“Okay. Enough. Enough. I understand.”
After securing the man’s hands, Harvath asked, “Who is Peter Roth?”
“I told you, I don’t—” Eichel began, but stopped when he saw Harvath balling his hand into a fist and cocking it back. “Okay, okay.”
“Okay, what? Who is Peter Roth?”
“He works for Lufthansa.”
“Who does he really work for?”
“I don’t know!” the man exclaimed.
Harvath punched him again, much harder.
Eichel spat a broken tooth onto the coffee table. “You have to believe me. I don’t know what any of this is all about.”
Harvath drew his fist back, and Eichel shut his eyes. But instead of punching him, Harvath grabbed him by his bound wrists and dragged him into the kitchen. The last thing he needed to do was break his hand repeatedly punching this idiot in the face.
He threw Eichel down on the floor and rummaged through the cabinets until he found what he was looking for.
Before the fat man could cry out, Harvath had the plastic bag over his head and had pulled it tight. Oxygen deprivation often did wonders for people’s level of cooperation, not to mention recollection.