The only question was who had won?
The living room was just as dark as the kitchen had been, but with her eyes now adjusted—relatively speaking—to the lack of light she had no trouble skirting a small coffee table and couch on her way to the picture window. The front door hung open but for now she ignored it. If Gruber was lying dead in the yard, the door may well have been left ajar by his killer intentionally, as a means to lure the dead man’s partner into a trap.
She eased the blinds back a couple of inches and peered out the window.
For a moment she could see nothing. No Gruber, no nameless operatives. The yard appeared empty, the operatives’ car still parked in the driveway. Then a slight movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention and Tracie glanced to the right, to the front landing.
And there was Gruber. His attention was directed downward as he checked another man for a pulse.
He had taken out one of the operatives, but where was the other?
She scanned the yard again, searching for any sign of the second man, but saw nothing. If both men had exited the front door, one of them was now gone.
She slipped across the room, her attention focused on the darkened hallway. If the second operative hadn’t gone out the front door with the first, he might appear in that entry at any moment, armed and out for blood.
Tracie reached the front door and flattened herself against the interior wall, concerned about getting shot by a jumpy Matthias Gruber. She whispered, “Gruber, it’s Quinn. Status?”
To his credit, the CIA man only hesitated for a second, then he responded. “I’m unharmed. This one is dead.”
“What about the second man?”
“I don’t know. I never saw the second man. He didn’t come out this door.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “If you’re certain this one’s dead, remove his weapons and then fall back to the tree line. Watch for the second guy, but remember: if at all possible, we need him alive. I’m going to flush him out if he’s still here, so be ready.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? If the gunfire woke up any of the neighbors, the police will be here within minutes.”
“We need that key,” she said. “And if there’s any chance the second operative is here, he’s our only living connection to the key, so we’re not leaving without him.”
She hadn’t really answered the question because she wasn’t at all sure it was a good idea. But it had to be done, so she would do it.
She crossed in front of the door, easing it closed as she passed. If the second operative was still inside this house, there was nothing to be gained by making things easy for him.
Then she hugged the wall until reaching the hallway entrance. Dropped to her knees. Eased her head around the corner, her weapon clutched in two hands and ready to fire.
Empty.
Three doors lined the hallway, all of them closed. One was on the right side, past the kitchen, and two were on the left. She thought carefully about the size of the kitchen relative to the home’s layout. Took an educated guess that the door on that side probably opened onto a bedroom.
That would mean one of the doors on the left side would be to a bathroom and the other probably a second bedroom. The bathroom would likely be centrally located, which meant it would be the first door to the left.
It would have to be cleared first. There was no way in the world Tracie was going to expose her back to that door without ensuring nobody with a gun was standing behind it, ready to put two slugs into her after she passed by.
She rose to a crouch and double-timed to the door. Said something resembling a quick prayer—Watch my back, please—and then turned the knob and pushed through the door, doing her best to remain silent but knowing speed was essential. The element of surprise would be on her side, but would evaporate quickly.
Her guess had been right. It was a bathroom. She scanned it quickly, eyes moving left to right, Glock following her eyes. Nobody here.
A narrow door on the left indicated a linen closet. It didn’t look big enough to hide a person but she checked it anyway.
Empty.
She checked behind a partially drawn shower curtain.
Empty.
She slipped out of the bathroom and closed the door quietly behind her. Only two doors remained, and if the second operative was still here, whether she lived or died might well depend upon which door she chose next. The man could be standing behind either.
She chose the door on the left for no particular reason and repeated the entry she had just made into the bathroom—quick and silent, gun up and ready.
The room was empty. Not just of people, but of anything. Not a single stick of furniture had been placed inside it. Two closets, the doors located side by side along the left wall, were the only potential hiding places. She cleared them in a matter of seconds and then moved quickly back to the hallway to face the final closed door.
The second operative had to be inside this room. If Gruber was right—and it was hard to imagine even the most inept of field operatives missing one of two men walking out a door just before shooting one of them—the only other way out of the house would have been through the kitchen door, and Tracie had maintained a direct line of sight to the kitchen from the time the gunfire broke out.
She breathed deeply.
Grasped the knob and turned.
Shoved the door open and flattened herself against the wall, waiting for a barrage of gunfire that never came.
A second passed, and then two, and the heavy silence lingered, unbroken.
She turned the corner and entered the room, leading with her gun, ready to shoot at the first sign of a threat.
Then she relaxed. There was no threat.
The second man was gone.
A flashing beacon, similar to the bubble light atop a 1960s police car, splashed the room in migraine-inducing bursts of red light. Dammit, Tracie thought. This is what I was afraid of. They were onto us the minute I broke into the house, maybe the minute we walked onto the property.
In the rear corner of the room, adjacent to the exterior wall, stood an open trap door. It had been built into the floor, and a ladder with iron rungs descended from the door straight down into a tunnel.
She moved cautiously across the room and covered the trap door with her weapon but there was no reason to do so. The second man—undoubtedly with the Amber Room key securely in his possession—had utilized the tunnel to exit the house, probably straight to a waiting vehicle somewhere else in the neighborhood.
The first guy distracted us so the second guy could escape, Tracie thought wonderingly. He gave up his life to ensure we didn’t get the key. That’s taking fanaticism to a whole new level. What in the holy hell is going on here?
15
November 15, 1987
7:10 a.m.
CIA safe house
Wuppertal, Federal Republic of Germany
The television set in the corner was tuned, volume lowered, to one of the local Wuppertal stations. The morning news had just started, and Tracie and Gruber sat side-by-side, sipping coffee and waiting to see how the shooting death of an elderly man just outside city limits in the wee hours of the morning would be reported.
After discovering the trap door, Tracie had considered descending the iron ladder and following the tunnel, but after a brief internal debate, had decided against it. It was highly unlikely the tunnel would be longer than a couple hundred feet. If a second vehicle had been parked at its exit point—and Tracie had no doubt that was the case—the second assassin would be long gone by the time she made her way to the end.
So she had shaken her head angrily and reversed course, backtracking through the house and stepping through the front door to the faraway sound of screaming sirens. They were still a fair distance away but were getting noticeably louder by the second, and Tracie had no doubt where they were headed.
To his credit, Gruber had held his ground despite the imminent arrival of the pol
ice, holding his weapon at the ready and scanning the area in front of the safe house for threats. Protecting her back. Tracie began to think maybe the man’s incompetence had been overstated a bit by Stallings.
“Did you relieve the dead guy of his weapons?” she asked, stepping over the corpse and pausing at the edge of the landing.
“Yes,” Gruber said. “All he had on him was the one pistol.”
“Then it’s time to go. Come on.” Tracie bounded down the steps and sprinted across the overgrown front lawn, wishing she had time to search the safe house, or at least the car sitting in the driveway, but knowing that to stick around even one minute longer would be inviting disaster.
They leapt into the Opel, Gruber once again behind the wheel. This time, it was not because Tracie didn’t trust him, but because he knew the area much better than she. He hit the gas hard, wisely avoiding screeching his tires but driving aggressively and wasting little time. They exited the neighborhood and turned left, circling west of Wuppertal to avoid encountering any police vehicles before returning to the CIA safe house.
They arrived inside of twenty minutes, Gruber driving slowly and cautiously once they were safely outside the dead man’s neighborhood. The exhausted pair held an abbreviated debriefing session at the tiny kitchen table, Tracie not wanting to wait until after they slept. The more time passed, the greater the chance for a critical detail to be forgotten.
Following a few hours of sleep, Tracie rose at seven a.m. to find Gruber already up and brewing coffee. She poured a cup and offered a bleary-eyed nod to her temporary partner, taking a seat in front of the television.
The “murder” was the lead story.
The anchor, a middle-aged blond man with a cowlick and a no-nonsense demeanor, stared into the camera and waited a moment before speaking. Drawing out the moment, Tracie assumed.
Then he said, “A Wuppertal man was killed in the overnight hours in a quiet neighborhood located on the western edge of the city. Helmut Wengler, sixty-six, was shot to death in what local police are calling a burglary gone wrong. The victim died on his front steps after confronting at least one intruder shortly after two a.m.”
A photo of the shooting victim appeared in the upper right corner of the screen. The image seemed barely larger than a postage stamp on the twelve-inch black-and-white television, and Tracie asked, “Is that the guy?’
Gruber shrugged. “I guess. Kind of hard to tell.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said, and then returned her attention to the report.
“Wengler, a widower who lived alone, was described by neighbors as friendly but quiet, a nice man who kept to himself but was quick to offer a smile and a wave. With little evidence left at the scene, authorities are asking anyone living in the neighborhood who might have seen or heard anything to please come forward. Contact the Wuppertal Police Department at…”
Tracie tuned out the anchorman as he moved on to another story. She looked quizzically at Gruber. “Anything strike you as odd about that story?”
“Do I have to pick one item? The whole thing was odd.”
“Yes it was,” Tracie said.
“The neighbors calling Wengler friendly? What was that about? We know the place was being used as a safe house, which means even if the guy spent some time there, he wasn’t standing on his front step waving at people on their way home from work and handing out candy to the neighborhood kids.”
She chuckled. “That’s human nature,” she said. “People get the opportunity to become part of a big news story, and they can’t pass it up. They know the reporter doesn’t want to hear that they’ve never seen the guy before, so they give him what he wants. They tell him the same thing they’ve seen on news reports dozens of times: ‘the victim was friendly but quiet.’
“But beyond that, there’s plenty the locals aren’t saying. Even the dimmest of dim-bulb investigators would have known thirty seconds after entering the house that the killing wasn’t a burglary gone wrong. How many people have a trap door in their bedroom leading to an underground escape tunnel?”
“It’s pretty common in the states for the police to keep certain details of a crime to themselves, and to avoid giving anything too interesting to the reporters. I’m sure they do the same thing in West Germany.” Gruber sipped his coffee and shrugged.
“Undoubtedly,” Tracie said. “And that may very well be the case here. But something else the anchor said causes me concern. Any idea what it might be?”
Gruber shrugged again. It was obvious he hated admitting he might have missed something. Finally he sighed deeply and said, “What?”
“If the story is being reported accurately—admittedly a questionable premise, especially where television news is concerned—the cops are practically coming out and telling the locals to forget about the case ever being solved.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The police spokesman told the reporters there was ‘little evidence found at the scene.’”
“So? I would think that’s good news for us, since we were there just ahead of them.”
“It is good for us. But it also strikes me as incongruous.”
“How so?”
“Think about it. The killing is only a few hours old. The body is practically still warm, and the investigation is in its earliest stages. It should be hours yet, maybe even days, before the police know what sort of evidence they may or may not have. Short of finding a signed confession at the scene that included the killer’s name and address, the investigators would never expect to have anything significant this soon.”
Tracie sipped her coffee and gazed over the top of the mug at Gruber. “You didn’t leave a signed confession at the scene, did you?”
He laughed and said, “I most certainly did not.”
She was starting to like him. “Just making sure. But you see my point? The official line should be that the investigation is continuing, and the authorities will vigorously pursue every lead, and blah, blah, blah. But here, the cops are throwing in the towel, telling people to forget it. There’s no evidence.”
“I see what you mean,” Gruber said. “It’s like they’re setting people up to accept that this crime will never be solved.”
“That’s how it struck me.”
“But why would they do that? You said yourself it’s very early in the investigation. How would they know already that the murder will go unsolved, and even if they do, why tell the community that?”
“All good questions.”
“Thank you. Why do I feel you have a theory?”
She smiled. “Well, it’s always possible the spokesperson misspoke or was misquoted. But I didn’t get the impression that was the case. I got the impression the comment was intentional, purposeful. That there was meaning behind it.”
“So does that mean you do have a theory?”
Tracie nodded as her smile faded away. “I do.”
“Well?” He spread his hands in anticipation. “Are you going to enlighten me?”
She stared in his direction, not seeing him.
Thinking.
Picturing a dead man at least double the age of a typical field operative.
Picturing a team of assassins that had appeared virtually out of thin air to kill the Soviet operative and recover the Amber Room key.
Picturing that team showing up in Wuppertal almost immediately after Klaus Newmann’s disappearance, beating even Tracie—who had been dispatched by the CIA director himself, with access to a private Gulfstream G4—to the punch.
Picturing a safe house that was being described to the local media as just another suburban West German home in a quiet neighborhood.
Adding it all up.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and taking another sip of coffee. She met his eyes and then looked away. “Not at the moment. I need to think this through.”
16
November 15, 1987
10:30 a.m.
CIA safe house
; Wuppertal, Federal Republic of Germany
“Somebody beat us to the Soviet operative. He’s dead and the key is gone.” Tracie held the secure satellite phone to her ear and winced, waiting for the inevitable angry explosion from CIA Director Aaron Stallings.
But to her surprise, there was no explosion. No anger. Nothing. Only a long silence through the earpiece as the old spymaster digested her statement.
“Explain,” Stallings finally said.
Tracie filled the director in on the timeline of events, starting with her arrival in Wuppertal and ending with the shootout at the suburban safe house that had resulted in one man dead and the Amber Room key disappearing through an underground tunnel.
“Theories?” Stallings said after she had finished. “You’re on the ground there. Who do you think has the Amber Room key now?”
“Let’s start with Newmann’s disappearance,” she said. “Gruber claims to have kept both the old Nazi, and the Soviet operative, under pretty tight surveillance. He says there’s no way he would have missed another operative hanging around.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Stallings said drily, “Gruber’s an idiot. His track record is poor and he’s going to be out of a job the minute I can get him back to Langley.”
“I’m not sure he’s as incompetent as you think,” she said. “He’s handled himself pretty well since I arrived in West Germany.”
“Is that so? And that opinion’s based on your lengthy track record of handling field operatives?”
“That opinion is based on working with the man and seeing his decision-making skills up close, under pressure.” Tracie felt her anger rising and tamped down on her emotions. It wasn’t easy. Dealing with Aaron Stallings was always problematic, but doing so under the current circumstances, with not one but two botched operations under her belt in the last twelve hours, felt nearly impossible.
“Anyway,” she said, breathing deeply and continuing, “my point is that unless another country’s intelligence service already had operatives here well before Newmann’s disappearance, it would have been impossible to transport them to Wuppertal, plan and execute the operation against the Soviet, find a safe house and dig an escape tunnel. There just would not have been time.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 82