by TR Kenneth
Vanderloos wasn’t going to wait around for that. The only solution was to take out Maguire and shut him up for good. Let the pieces fall where they may. He wasn’t going to go down like Roberts.
No. No. Nope.
Stag sat in the Lobby Bar, waiting and drinking. It was after eleven. He’d returned to his room at the Adlon and found everything as he’d left it. Tarnhelm had to have sifted through his room several times while he’d been gone. But the real question that nagged him: if Red Riding Hood found him, Tarnhelm had to know where he was, so why the hell had they kept their distance?
The answer had to be they were biding their time, studying him, figuring how to best extract his information. He swallowed his fear and paranoia with every sip of whiskey.
He looked around, seeing the usual suspects: business associates having nightcaps and going through their tablets, an older couple enjoying a bottle of the familiar orange label of Veuve Cliquot. Nothing out of the ordinary. But no little Red Riding Hood.
He perused the news on his iPad. The headlines led with a Tarnhelm executive’s private plane that was missing over the Baltic. Terrorism was suspect given the sensitivity of Mr. Roberts’ work with private contractors in Iraq, the article said. Wreckage of the plane, remnants of a small explosive device, and the pilot’s body were all found. Roberts, however, was feeding the fishes. No body. The usual groups were being held accountable. More than one had already claimed responsibility.
Knowing Tarnhelm, there was more to the story than that. But right now, that was not his circus, not his monkey. Instead, he took the diary from the Ziploc bag and flipped to the page he’d last been deciphering.
I did not plan to be a U-boat. I did not expect to survive at all. The Gestapo told this criminal Jew that she would have to report to the Freibourg Clinic for Racial Hygiene. I was one of the lucky ones, I was told. Because of my blond hair and blue eyes, I was to be allowed to remain and simply receive “treatment.” A new experiment was being tried as a cure for my tainted blood. A series of X-ray treatments were prescribed. Painless at first.
But then the bleeding began. The terrible, unending flow. They were most pleased how quickly it started. Then my hair began to fall out. Not entirely. I was blessed with an overabundance of hair, and I was able to pin and pad what I had left after I went to ground.
You never knew that you did this to me, did you? But you were a hair-puller, weren’t you, my darling? When you would fall on top of me, I would lay there beneath you, pretending to revel in your caress, all the while seeing my hair, my precious, precious hair, intertwined in your fingers, tickling my breast, mocking every effort of mine to stay upon this earth.
How did I become a U-boat, you ask?
I dutifully went for my treatments until one day the nurse who greeted me decided to take mercy upon me. Or perhaps she was simply resentful of her betters at that moment and decided to rebel. She announced to me in her best Bund Deutscher Mädel voice that the treatments were being discontinued. The powers that be at Tiergartenstrasse 4 had decided the process was taking too long to be effective. New plans were being developed. I was no longer required to return.
Then she did the most astonishing thing.
She whispered as I was leaving, “Don’t go home.”
Numb, I left the doctor’s and took exile on the trolley bus. I traveled for miles, it seemed, unsure of my destiny. Those were the days before rationing. Traveling then in a crowded trolley was still pleasant, before ersatz soap made every soul stink and ersatz butter made every body flatulent. No, to ride the streetcar then was to see happy productive people, to smell perfume and tobacco, and hear laughter. But none of that comforted me then. I was terrified and I rode for hours trying desperately to think of what to do. But where does one go when you are an ersatz human?
I went to make my plea to Wilfred Israel. He could not get me out. But to my relief, he was able to supply me with new papers. I was now a real German again, with papers going back to my great grandparents. With them, I took a job as my new Aryan self as a hatcheck girl at the Scala. And that is where I met you, my lover.
That is where I met you.
Stag rubbed his eyes and looked around. He was chasing mist, he told himself. First the haunting Isolda, then Red Riding Hood with her pale blue gloves and matching stare.
He threw some bills on the table and packed up. Heading to the elevator, he half-expected to see her standing at the concierge, or ensconced by the elephant fountain in her vintage suit. But she was nowhere.
He barely looked at the two special agents sent to watch him at the Adlon. It was imperative, Troost told him, that nobody know he was being watched. Now one agent sat in the Lobby Bar, studiously nursing a Coke, while the other nonchalantly rode in the elevator with him, making sure to observe him as he headed to his room, cardkey in hand.
He unlocked the door and heard the comforting sound of Sinatra being played on his sound system. Turndown service had prepared his room. He dropped his cardkey in the entrance.
And there she was.
Waiting for him in the beige deco chair, like a spectre greeting the dead at the entrance to a crypt.
For a long moment, he said nothing, simply stared at her. The hair had risen at the back of his neck. The only comfort he had was the fact that she’d had plenty of opportunity to take him out before now. If she hadn’t, it meant that she, too, was out for information. But for whom? He was going to find out.
“How did you get in here?” Captain Obvious. Sometimes he truly wondered how a little guy like him was going to survive against Tarnhelm.
She looked to the bed. Draped there was a maid’s smock with the Adlon logo. She must’ve slid by Interpol dressed as the help.
Easy to ignore the powerless, he thought.
He noted how calm she appeared, her legs crossed and slung to the side, one hand resting lightly on a silenced Walther PPK that was casually placed on the table next to her, the other hand cradling the fresh white rose that had been left in a bud vase next to his bed at turndown.
“Who the fuck are you?” He saw no point in vacillating. “And why are you interested in me?”
“You’re an interesting man, Mr. Maguire,” she answered, her accent cultured, painfully neutral. British, perhaps, with a trace of Eastern Europe. “Truthfully, you interest me, regardless.”
“Regardless of Tarnhelm?” he shot back.
“Regardless.”
“You’ve attracted some interest too,” he said. “Interpol asked about you.”
She didn’t look surprised. The intelligence in her eyes was only eclipsed by her cynicism. He took note of the worn vintage suit she wore this time, different than the last, but somehow the same. The deconstruction of it struck him. It jarringly reminded him of the aged clothing you would find on a corpse, but she was hardly corpse-like with her fine symmetrical features, her pink cheeks, and her curves beneath the lines of the suit. No, she was very much alive. Not some cold, dead shell that could harm no one. This woman breathed threat like an intoxicating perfume.
He thought about Je Reviens—I come back. Briefly, he believed in spirits.
“They told me you assassinated a NATO official for Tarnhelm.” Stag cut to the chase. “Then why the hell haven’t you put a bullet in me?”
“Killing you right now goes against their purpose. They want to know what information you have, Mr. Maguire. They will go to great lengths to find out.”
He met her eye. “What I have is mine alone.”
“You’ve rattled cages,” she said. “They will use all means. Means you can’t even guess at.”
He thought of Harry’s gruesome death. “I’m getting good at guessing.”
“Mr. Portier would like you to not have to guess.”
“I’ll be happy to have a nice long discussion with Portier.”
She shook her head. “You won’t have a long one.”
“He’ll see me dead first, I imagine?”
“After he g
ets his information, you will be a dead man.” A brief empathy crossed her face. “Your wife would have probably preferred you retire with your money to some beautiful palazzo in Ibiza, Mr. Maguire, than martyr yourself for a dubious cause. I wonder if this is not the hill to die on.”
“Yeah?” He shifted in his seat and wondered briefly if he should introduce the P83 right now. “What’s the hill you would die on?”
The wariness lowered for a moment. Then she spoke with matter-of-factness. “There is only one hill. I have a child.”
“I don’t.”
“No.”
She knew about Holly’s pregnancy, too. He had to give it to Tarnhelm, they were thorough.
“How did they get Harry?”
“Ice needle, I imagine.” She stroked the silencer on the PPK with the fresh white rose.
“That’s why we couldn’t find a wound on him. The needle goes in and melts. Poison?”
She nodded. “Probably Micotil, a bovine antibiotic. Difficult to detect and causes heart failure in humans. It has a two-pronged hit. If the patient makes it to the hospital, the standard dose of epinephrine just speeds it along.”
He nodded. He hurt for Harry.
“Mr. Maguire—you’re only one man. You cannot fight Tarnhelm. Tell me what you know, and perhaps I can get them to call off the chase.”
“Bullshit. They murdered Harry. They’re never going to call it off on me.”
She conceded the point by pursing her lips. “If you tell me what it is you know—”
“Why don’t we start by you telling me what you know, such as what this big bad company is so afraid of?”
She looked at him with a grudging admiration. “You can’t threaten Tarnhelm. You’re not big enough. I know this very, very well.”
“Maybe not, but I can go for all the collateral damage I can.”
He swore she almost smiled.
“May I bring Mr. Portier a message? He’s anxious to hear from you,” she said.
“Tell him I’ll be calling him to meet with me as soon as I’m good and ready.” He gestured to the PPK. “Are we done?” he asked.
“I doubt it.”
She stood.
He instinctively stepped back. “What’s your stake in this? Money? Power? Or are you fucking Portier?” He waited for the reply.
“Good evening.” She handed him the white rose.
When she left, he swore he’d just seen a ghost.
CHAPTER TWENTY
AFTER SHE’D GONE, Stag assessed what he had in his hotel room. Interpol had done a bang-up job already; he sure as hell wasn’t counting on them giving him a good night’s rest. But weaponry was hard to come by. All he had was the P-83 and it would do him absolutely no good while he was asleep.
He went to his computer and searched for creative methods of self-protection. After a few minutes of research, he figured out what to do.
In the bathroom, he stared at the cut-crystal glass on the sink for his drinking water. In his pocket, he dug out a pair of nail clippers he’d bought in the airport and assessed them.
Angelika Aradi was perhaps more interrogator and less assassin, but he didn’t trust her. Hell, right now, he didn’t trust anybody. He made up his mind to take care of his own damned security.
Duke Farnsworth loved Berlin. It appealed to his every white, male, conservative sensibility. The women were blond, the wine was French, the architecture clean and modern. To do a job there was pleasure upon pleasure.
He checked his weaponry. The bulk of the ice needle gun was more than he liked to carry. It ruined the cut of his suit. But it was everybody’s favorite. Clean and quick. The only mess was in the after-effects. You couldn’t disable the person right away, so the ice needle was only for certain circumstances. For the rest, he carried a Beretta 8000. The “Cougar” was sleek, swift, and now readily concealed beneath his suit jacket.
Duke Farnsworth had started out with a silver spoon in his mouth and a Yale degree. He was a bright baby investment banker who got his thrills and his insider stock tips from his good friends at Tarnhelm. That there was something inherently evil about a young, good-looking male in a Hugo Boss suit was a given. Farnsworth had no handicaps. The world just unfolded for him.
Of course, a complete lack of conscience could be a handicap. But in the business of assassination, it was a golden asset. There were some who worked very hard to keep theirs under control. Not Duke.
Which is why he didn’t bill himself to Tarnhelm as an independent contractor. No point in highlighting the fact that a lack of conscience came with an absolute lack of loyalty. It made him a huge whore, but who wasn’t a whore? Even the exalted Portier was a whore. It was obvious he was afraid of that Maguire guy in Wuttke. He wanted Maguire to talk.
But now, after Duke was done with him, there would only be infuriating silence.
He checked his bank account. The Vanderloos wire payment had hit. All set. He looked down at the master key card to the rooms at the Adlon. Bought at great expense but all part of the contract.
He smirked. It was three a.m. The electronic key card would gain him entrance to the elevator and to Maguire’s room. The job was about as direct as he’d ever had: Take. Him. Out.
Stag stepped out into the hallway outside his room and upended a glass of water. It was absorbed and camouflaged by the swirl pattern of the carpeting. For good measure, he splattered two more glasses, and then shut his door.
With the nail clippers, he clipped the cord to a table lamp and stripped the plastic coating off the wires, flushing the telltale plastic down the toilet. Then he wrapped the raw wires around the room’s door handle that was in turn wired to the electronic lock that used the key card.
Stepping back, he appraised his handiwork. He was no genius but he was sure good at an internet search and following directions.
Anxious about the setup, he placed a chair in front of the door, not so much to protect him from whomever entered, but to protect himself should he awake in the dark, befuddled, and head for the door. He smirked. That would be just like him to stumble into his own trap.
Now he had nothing to do but get some restless sleep.
Stag opened his eyes to the sound. Not quite to a scream; it was a kind of violent gurgle. The door rattled like barbarians at the gate, and for a far greater time than it would need to kill.
In the darkened room, he had a good, sickening mental picture of what was happening outside. The current was driving through the arm of the person on the other side of the door. Where the current drove through his body, the ATP—adenosine triphosphate—would be burned off and his muscles would stiffen. A kind of pre-dead rigor mortis. Then the current would blow out one or more wounds on the person’s calves where the current exited to reach the ground. Urine would run down his legs as his bladder involuntarily emptied, and when the medics came, they would think the victim had wet the carpet.
Not the perp.
There was a flurry of activity outside, as down the hallway, doors opened to discover the source of the strange sounds. Stag anxiously leapt out of bed and switched on a light. He unplugged the cord to the door and took it off the door handle. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he twisted together the wires inside the lamp and refastened the sticky felt covering on its base. Then he put it back on the table where it belonged, plugged it in, and turned it on. It worked perfectly. The staff would never notice the slightly truncated cord.
The phone rang in his room. He picked up the receiver.
“Herr Maguire! Emergency!” came the voice at the other end. “Please, please do not touch your door! We’ve had accident! Z’ fire department will open it for you! Attention! Attention!”
Maguire gave his calm assurances. Then, his message delivered to Tarnhelm to fuck off, he lay down to wait.
Of course, the Adlon lawyers wanted to meet with him. He knew too well there was no shortage of them when something bad occurred. Maguire refused the meeting. The last thing he wanted was a bunch of que
stions. He told the management he was fine and he didn’t know what happened. No, he didn’t want to sign anything; and he didn’t know the dead man outside his door in the security video that they showed him.
And he most certainly had no idea why the black guy stood watching the execution at the end of the hallway. Never coming to the man’s aid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
4EVER GRIMLY EASED himself into the marble tub, drawn and waiting for him in his apartment overlooking the river Spree. As he leaned back against the warm white Carrera, he cursed himself for taking a hit with the fiasco at the Adlon. Sure, it could’ve been him with his hand stuck on the door handle, frying like a pigeon on a live wire, but that was why he never took side jobs on his own. Death was the ultimate game of bait and switch. Which was why he was still alive. But today had been most unsatisfactory. He never should have subcontracted the hit, but he hadn’t expected an out-of-work journalist to come up with anything that elegant. Now it was a black mark on him, not Maguire.
He was 4EVER. He fucking knew better.
Checking the news feed on his device, he tapped in the queries about the accident at the Adlon, wiping the steam off the screen with a pristine white towel. 4EVER draped the towel on the tub wall behind him, taking a pen from the tub-side table, and began his report to Vanderloos.
Tarnhelm didn’t believe in inter-office memos when the dirty work had to be performed. One Time Pad, OTP all the way. It was their key to success. No email to trace, no memos left in a file for the authorities to find. Ever. And with it, the absolute secrecy that made them the top of the food chain in security service. Of course, they always required an outline of everything that went wrong or right. Then the recipient would read it, absorb it, and watch the document burn. There was no hacking that system.