by Allan Folsom
“You are at your best when it’s like that.” Elsa’s throaty voice came back to him. “You should enjoy it, you always have. Besides, they expect it. It’s why you were called and not someone else.”
“Yes. Alright. I understand,” he said finally. “Yes. Yes. Of course.” With that he clicked off.
Hauptkommissar Emil Franck’s persona had been established early in his career as that of a man who was most successful when he worked alone. Between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-seven he had single-handedly ended the vocations of nineteen public enemies. Ten were in prison, the rest dead. The media, even his colleagues, both then and now referred to him as Berlin’s “Cowboy,” its “Dirty Harry,” and it was that role he would play to Detectives Bohlen and Prosser and the others in the situation room when he returned. Something had come up, he would tell them. Something he would take care of himself. Their instructions would be to continue on the course he had laid out for them that morning, an intense continuation of the massive and very public manhunt for the killer of Theo Haas. There would be no announcement that he had left. The media would be told only that he was coordinating the effort from his headquarters office and was unavailable for comment. No other details would be given. It was that simple.
50
RITZ-CARLTON BERLIN, SUITE 1422. 8:08 P.M.
Sy Wirth clicked off one of the two BlackBerrys he’d carried with him since he left Houston and picked up a freshly sharpened number 2 Ticonderoga 1388 pencil. He made a brief note on the last of the half-dozen yellow legal pads on the writing table in front of him, on which he had scribbled twenty-odd memos, the result of several hours’ worth of business calls. Done, he looked at his watch, then picked up the BlackBerry he’d just used, the one he called his everyday phone and utilized for business and personal calls. He was about to punch in a number when there was a knock at the door.
“Yes,” he said impatiently.
“Room service, Mr. Wirth.”
Wirth got up and opened the door. A uniformed waiter pushed a rolling table with a covered platter, a carafe of coffee, and a bottle of mineral water into the room. He was starting to set it up when Wirth intervened.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said brusquely and gave him a twenty-euro bill.
“Thank you, Mr. Wirth. Guten abend.” The man nodded and left, closing the door behind him.
Wirth lifted the silver cover from the platter, glanced at the club sandwich beneath it. Ignoring it, he went back to the desk, picked up the everyday BlackBerry, punched in a number, and waited for it to ring through.
“Yes.” Dimitri Korostin’s voice filtered through his earpiece.
“Well?”
“You sound nervous, Sy.”
“How long are you going to keep me waiting around? What’s the status of our project?”
Korostin laughed. “Your status is that you’re anxious and on edge. My status is that I’m getting a blow job. Afterward I’m going to dinner with friends. I think my lifestyle is better than yours, Sy. Excuse me a minute.” Suddenly there was dead air, as if he’d clicked off. A full two minutes later he came back on. “Sy, you there?”
“Fuck you and your blow job.”
“Relax, Sy. Like they say, your order has been processed. I will have information for you before midnight. Fair enough? I wouldn’t want to disappoint you and risk losing the Magellan/Santa Cruz–Tarija gas field. Would I?”
With that Korostin clicked off, leaving Sy Wirth alone with his two BlackBerrys, half-dozen legal pads, coffee, mineral water, club sandwich, and unease.
8:20 P.M
Hauptkommissar Emil Franck turned his Audi down a service road near Tegel Airport in the last rays of warm summer-evening sunshine. Sunshine that, after the gray skies and drizzle of the morning should have cheered him a little at least. But he was in no mood for cheer. Apprehending Marten for the killing of Theo Haas had been one thing, but since the photographs and the rebellion in Equatorial Guinea had come into play it was clear that something far more complex than the murder of a Nobel laureate was taking place. As he had said on the phone, it would be a billiard game. Kovalenko was already in it. Moscow was watching. God only knew where it would go from there.
Ahead he could see a maroon Opel parked at the side of the road next to a security fence. All around was the thunder and whine of jet aircraft approaching or taking off from the airfield. He slowed, then pulled up behind the Opel and stopped. Two men were in it. Kovalenko and a driver. The Russian said something to the other man, then opened the door and got out and walked back to the Audi.
“So, our friend is now airborne and in a piston-engine Cessna,” Kovalenko said as he slid in next to Franck.
“Fuselage registration D-VKRD,” Franck said. “Flight plan filed to Málaga. They will have to stop for fuel at least once.”
“You’ve done well, Hauptkommissar. I know how valuable informants can be. I trust you will see that he or she is well rewarded.”
“Things have a way of taking care of themselves.”
Kovalenko smiled. “True, Hauptkommissar. It is—” Kovalenko’s voice was drowned out by the roar of a Lufthansa Airbus taking off. He waited until the sound died away and then continued. “It is safe to leave your car here?”
“Why?”
Kovalenko smiled again. “Nothing against Berlin law enforcement. It’s just that I have a driver. We’ll take mine.”
“To where? We’re leaving from here. From Tegel, yes?”
“No, Schönefeld.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I cannot think as Moscow does.” Kovalenko shrugged. “What can I tell you? You should see the hotels they put me up in.”
Franck studied him for the briefest moment. He didn’t like the sudden change of arrangements. Kovalenko was supposed to have arranged for a private jet that would leave from here, from Tegel. Now the plan had shifted to Schönefeld Airport in Brandenburg, south of the city. It would be a waste of time to ask why. He’d been through this kind of thing often enough in the past, in “the old days,” before the wall was torn down. One didn’t ask why, just did what Moscow ordered.
“Alright,” he said finally. They got out of the Audi, Franck pulled a small overnight bag from the rear seat, then closed the door and locked it. Thirty seconds later they were in the Opel and heading south toward Schönefeld Airport.
8:32 P.M.
51
CESSNA 340, D-VKRD, SOMEWHERE OVER
SOUTHERN GERMANY. CRUISING SPEED 190 MPH.
ALTITUDE 26,170 FEET. 9:35 P.M.
They had been flying for nearly two and a half hours, with Anne and Marten sitting impassively in plush leather seats behind the pilot, the blond, handsome Brigitte. Before they took off she had courteously filled them in with her full name—Brigitte Marie Reier—and a little of her history. She was thirty-seven and had flown in the German air force. She was a single mother of twelve-year-old twins. The three lived “temporarily” with her brother, his wife, and their two children, and everyone got along, more or less. And that had been that. Afterward she was back to the business at hand, telling them there was bottled water and sandwiches and a thermos of coffee in the pullout tray beyond the seats. There was a tiny toilet facility between the pilot and passenger compartments, she said, but if they could, they might be better off waiting until they made a fuel stop—or stops, depending on head-or crosswinds—and they could pee or whatever at that time. That had ended it. Immediately she’d helped them on board, climbed into the cockpit, then started the engines and taken off. Little or nothing had been said since.
Brigitte aside, it was Anne who had kept the silence, sitting back, hands in her lap, staring blankly out the window. When Marten had asked her if she wanted something to eat or drink she’d not even looked at him, simply shook her head in reply. His first thought was that now they were finally up and away and out of the immediate grasp of the police she was troubled by her promise to meet with Joe Ryder, show him the photograph
s—presuming they found them—and reveal the clandestine business workings of Striker Oil, Hadrian, and SimCo. To promise it was one thing because it was nothing more than a pledge written in air. To actually carry through and do it was something else because she not only risked publicly damning her father’s reputation but might well face a federal indictment herself. Both were cause enough for her to withdraw while she tried to find a way out of her commitment, yet for some reason he didn’t believe that was what was troubling her. It was something else entirely.
Then he realized what it was—Erlanger’s cold warning before they got on the plane and the silent, stony way he’d walked away afterward and driven off.
“Stay away from the old contacts, he’d said. You got away with it this once. For your sake, don’t try it again.”
From Marten’s view it was hard to tell what it had meant to her. Maybe she’d been in love with him once, or still was, and had expected some kind of romantic good-bye. A kiss or an affectionate hug, or something in between, a physical gesture that would confirm that he still had feelings for her. On the other hand, there could have been more to it, something left unsaid that Marten didn’t understand, something that frightened her more than it upset her. Which, as he thought about it now, was more likely because the look in her eyes had been more fear than hurt.
“Mind if I ask you something personal?” he smiled gently.
For the first time she looked at him. “It depends what it is.”
“What Erlanger said at the airstrip just before he left. It affected you a great deal.”
“The Erlanger thing is past,” she said coldly. “Let’s drop it.”
Marten watched her. The Erlanger thing wasn’t past at all. Moreover, the abrupt way she’d answered and the look in her eyes when she’d done it told him he’d touched a nerve she didn’t want touched. And he’d been right—whatever it was, the heart of it had been fear. Of what, he didn’t know, but clearly it was important. It didn’t surprise him that she didn’t want to discuss it, but maybe there was another way to come at it, especially if he could learn a little more about her.
“What if we just talk about something else?”
“Why?”
Marten grinned. “Well, it’s going to be a long night, and I don’t think Brigitte brought along a stack of magazines.”
Anne leaned back in her seat and studied him. “What would you like to talk about?”
“Don’t know.” He said with a shrug. “You said you’d been married. How’s that for starters?”
“Twice.”
“Twice?”
“Don’t look so shocked. I’ve got friends who would think that’s nothing more than spring training.”
“I’m not shocked, just surprised.”
“At what?”
“Your lifestyle doesn’t seem to reflect home, hearth, and motherhood once, let alone twice.”
“If you’re asking if I have a home, yes, I do. As for children, no, I don’t. Neither husband was suited to be a father, and I don’t think I’d have made much of a mother, either. Besides, I couldn’t have them.”
“That’s more than I needed to know.”
“So now you do. And now it’s your turn. How many times have you been married?”
“Never.”
“Why is that? You’re not a bad-looking guy.”
“Thanks.”
“It wasn’t a compliment, it was a question.”
“The only two women I ever really cared enough about to go down that road with did other things.”
“Like what?”
“One I met in England. She suddenly ran off and married the British ambassador to Japan.”
“The other?”
Marten hesitated, then stared into some private distance that was his own.
“Well?” Anne pushed him a little, hoping to hear some kind of colorful, lurid gossip. She got something else entirely.
“She died a little more than a year ago. She was young and married. Her husband and son had been killed in a plane crash a few weeks earlier. We grew up together. We were childhood sweethearts. I loved her very much.”
“I’m sorry.” Anne was taken aback, embarrassed by what she had done. “I didn’t mean to intrude like that.” Suddenly she became gentle and very human. It was a side of her he hadn’t seen before.
“You couldn’t have known.”
“May I ask what happened?”
“She was . . .” Marten looked off again, the pain and loss and anger still there. “Murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“She was purposely given an incurable staph infection. It’s a long, complicated story. Thankfully for her it’s over.”
“But it’s not for you.”
“No.”
For a long moment Anne said nothing, just let him sit there in the privacy of his thoughts that she knew were millennia away. The only sound was the hum of the Cessna’s engines.
“What was her name?” she said finally.
“Caroline.”
“She must have been beautiful.”
“She was.”
10:02 P.M.
52
BERLIN. THE APARTMENT AT 11 GIESEBRECHTSTRASSE.
10:47 P.M.
“We’re leaving now, Mr. Wirth. I’ll confirm when we’re airborne.” Conor White clicked off his BlackBerry, then clicked back on and punched in a number.
Across from him, Patrice and Irish Jack were already on their feet, putting away the cards they’d been playing, packing up, getting ready to leave.
“This is White.” He spoke into his BlackBerry. “File a flight plan for Málaga, Spain, and get clearance for takeoff. Wheels up in forty minutes.”
“Málaga?” Sennac said, his eyebrows raised, his Quebecois accent pronounced as always.
“Oui,” Conor White nodded as he clicked off.
Irish Jack grinned. “Good pubs, good babes, good beaches. Merrily we roll along.”
“Jack,” White cautioned, “we’re not on holiday.”
“Aw, don’t spoil the fucker for us, Colonel.” He winked at Patrice. “What we got to do won’t take but a short few minutes. Will it now?”
“It shouldn’t,” White said deliberately and with none of the Irishman’s humor. “And won’t.”
“You’re right, Col o nel, it won’t.” Patrice glanced at Irish Jack, a warning to back off the levity. They’d known White’s obsession with recovering the photographs from the beginning. If they needed a reminder they needed only to remember what happened in the farm house outside Madrid. The grilling of the young Spanish doctor and her medical students had gone on to the point where White had had enough. Removing his balaclava and telling them to remove theirs had been a signal that they would give them one last chance to cooperate and that would be it. Killing one captive in front of others was an age-old means of attempting to terrify those left into divulging information when they had so far refused to provide. It hadn’t worked, and White ended it on the spot. Afterward he’d sincerely apologized to the three horrified students who remained, saying he had taken up too much of their time, and told the limo driver to take them back to their homes and parents in Madrid, knowing full well Patrice had rigged the limousine to explode twelve minutes after the engine was started. Seconds after they’d gone, White went into the barn where the Spanish gunman who’d brought him there waited with the car, and shot him where he stood.
For a professional soldier like Conor White to be fixated on accomplishing a mission was one thing. The depth of his passion was something else entirely. He’d told his men soon after the interrogation of the Spanish doctor and her students had begun that they had no idea where the pictures were and or even what their captors were talking about. But he’d gone on with the questioning anyway. Then personally managed their deaths.
Over the years both he and Irish Jack had lived and fought alongside extremely cruel and often fanatical men, but nothing matched what Conor White had done in Spain. He was c
learly mad, and in a way neither of them had ever seen before, not even on the battlefield. Still, they would follow him into hell simply because they knew something larger was going on, the substance of which they, as foot soldiers, wouldn’t know about or be told. Whatever it was, it was clearly important enough for White to be giving everything within him to successfully execute. You took orders from men like that, fought alongside them and didn’t ask questions. It was what he and Irish Jack had signed on for and the kind of professionals they were.
RITZ-CARLTON BERLIN, SUITE 1422. 10:55 P.M.
“Málaga.” Dimitri Korostin’s call had come ten minutes earlier. His message had been to the point and exceedingly brief. “They will probably arrive sometime after four in the morning, maybe later. The plane is a piston-engine Cessna 340. Its fuselage registration is D-VKRD. If there’s a change I will inform you. Sweet dreams. Get your own blow job and don’t worry so much.” With that he’d hung up.
Sy Wirth was still at the writing table, his chin resting in his hands, his yellow legal pads piled up beside him, the remains of his club sandwich on a side table.
“Cessna 340. Fuselage registration D-VKRD. Flight plan filed Berlin to Málaga, Spain. ETA sometime after four in the morning.”
It was the information he’d passed on to Conor White, secure in the fact that if the Cessna changed course Dimitri would report to him within minutes, and in turn he would alert White. But until then White was to keep a safe distance behind and follow Marten’s Cessna directly to Málaga. Something he would do without question because that was the directive Wirth had purposely given him.
Let him go first. Give him time to get there, Wirth thought. It has to look as if he’s doing this on his own, that he’s out to protect himself, SimCo, and Hadrian at all costs and that Striker has no knowledge of it whatsoever.