by Andy Maslen
Krieger downed the remainder of his drink. “Drink up, Gabriel. I sense we shall need more of these.” He signalled to the waitress for two more. As the jazz trio moved into “Summertime,” Krieger leaned forwards across the table.
“You know what they say about murder, Gabriel?”
“What?”
“That it is only ever for one of two reasons. Love or money.”
“I don’t think someone hired a hit woman because they love me, if that’s what you’re saying. And I haven’t got any money. Or not enough to have someone able to afford an assassin’s services to come after me.”
Krueger shook his head and smiled. “No money? You came to my office this afternoon with three million dollars’ worth of US bearer bonds.”
“I know this woman, Walti. The killer, I mean. I’ve met her. Three million is her standard fee. Her client wouldn’t come out ahead by killing me over the bonds.”
If Krieger was surprised at Gabriel’s admission, he disguised it perfectly. Perhaps he’d simply seen too many things to be shockable any more.
“No,” he said. “That is not what I am saying. Because the old adage has it wrong. There is a third motive for murder. Love, money … or power.”
He paused as the waitress returned with fresh drinks, removed the empty cocktail glasses and replaced the napkins. He nodded his thanks to her, then resumed talking.
“Does a serial killer murder for love? Does a dictator? No! Or money? No, again. But power? Yes. For that he will kill again and again. Perhaps it is a question of power that caused this person to commission the killings of your friend and comrade.”
Gabriel frowned, and sipped his drink. Then he shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. It could be. But again, I don’t really have power. I work for people who do, but then why come after me?”
“And you’re sure they are coming after you? That your friends weren’t the real targets?”
Gabriel put his drink down and scratched at his scalp through his hair, ruffling it into spikes.
“Yes. I mean, I think so. There are details that make me believe that.”
“Hmm. Well, I do not say that they want power from you. Simply that if neither love nor money seem to offer a motive, the third member of that trinity might.”
“You have a point, Walti. But offhand I’m struggling to think who it must be.” The coffee he’d consumed in his hotel room, coupled with the martinis, prompted a new question. “I’m sorry, could you point me to the restrooms?”
“Of course, dear boy. Out of the door and then across the lobby to the corridor. They are down on the right at the end.”
Gabriel stood and made his way out of the bar, following Krieger’s directions to a dark-wood-panelled restroom. When he came out, he was about to return to the bar when he heard a woman’s whimpering cry, a shout and then a snatch of a song in a deep, male voice. It appeared to be coming from behind a door at the end of a second corridor that doglegged off the first.
He walked down the thickly carpeted corridor and placed his ear against the door. From inside he could hear more shouting, though it appeared to be encouragement rather than anger. He heard humour in the voices. But something else too. A sound he’d heard on active duty and in his work for The Department. The sound was cruelty.
He placed his hand on the brass doorknob, twisted it and eased the door open just enough to peer round. What he saw made him stop breathing for a second.
Dinner and a Show
THE room contained perhaps a dozen small, circular tables, the same sort as those scattered through the bar he had just left. Each hosted two or three of the dinner-jacketed men and their expensively dressed companions he had seen milling about in the lobby when he arrived. The room was lit by dozens of tall, white candles and shaded red lamps in the centres of the tables. Heavy, red velvet curtains shrouded the tall windows. Wine glasses and place settings crowded each table top. Nobody was looking at the door, which was behind the tables; instead, all eyes were fixed on a tableau on a small, low stage at the far end of the room.
The stage was hung with a backdrop painted to resemble some sort of military barracks surrounded by barbed wire. And in front of the backdrop, a scene was being played out that almost made Gabriel retch. Two tall, blond men dressed in the unmistakable black uniforms of the SS had hold of a cowering, dark-haired woman by the wrists. She was naked from the waist up, her lower limbs barely concealed in a torn scrap of greyish brown fabric. They were grinning down at her as they dragged her across the stage to a hard wooden chair. The woman was struggling, and Gabriel thought he detected real fear in her dark eyes.
At one of the front row tables, he saw a man he’d noticed earlier, crossing the lobby in front of him. And then he saw the object that had triggered his spider sense. Pinned to the left breast of the man’s dinner jacket was a military decoration. The ribbon was black, white and red; the medal itself was a black-and-white cross. The Iron Cross, a Nazi-era military medal.
Another whimper from the captive woman dragged Gabriel’s attention back to the stage. The two blond men had forced her to sit astride the chair with her chest against its back and were lashing her wrists together. Now Gabriel noticed that one had a coiled, black leather whip hanging from his belt.
He didn’t decide to act. He didn’t pause to reflect. He moved.
“No!” he shouted as loudly as he could.
He threw the door wide open so that it banged against the wall and sprinted between the tables towards the stage.
Over a chorus of shouts and cries of indignation in German, he barged his way past the last two tables standing between him and the stage.
The two men dressed as SS guards had turned to face him. They were no longer grinning. But they weren’t running either. They were squaring up for a fight. Which was a mistake.
As the nearer of the two men raised his fists and swung, Gabriel ducked under the incoming blow, pivoted on his left hip and kicked upwards towards the man’s jaw. The force was all he could muster, and he heard the crunch as the sole of his shoe connected, breaking the mandible and toppling the man to the floor with a scream of agony. The second man leapt forwards and grabbed Gabriel from behind, struggling to get his meaty forearms secured against his throat.
Instead of trying to loosen the man’s grip, Gabriel let himself fall. As gravity pulled him down, the man instinctively went to compensate, adjusting his grip. He shouldn’t have. In that moment, Gabriel’s right elbow stabbed backwards into his groin, bringing forth a wheezing cry and freeing Gabriel from the stranglehold. He whirled round, drew his foot back and stamped onto the man’s left knee. It was an ugly, but brutally effective move, and as the man’s cruciate ligaments audibly sheared and snapped, Gabriel closed in and chopped him across the throat with the blade of his right hand.
Both assailants down on the ground and no longer a problem, Gabriel bent to the woman and untied her hands.
“Run!” he shouted at her and pointed to the door.
Covering her exposed breasts, she took one look at her erstwhile captors, spat at the closer of the two, then ran for the door and disappeared through it.
He turned.
The audience for the perverted spectacle he’d interrupted were on their feet, eyes wide in shock. Nobody was moving though, either towards him or for the door. They were looking at each other. Then something happened that surprised Gabriel.
First a single, white-haired man at the front, then others and, finally, the whole room, began to clap. Their faces, so recent paralysed with shock, now broke into smiles. They whistled, they called, “Bravo!” They came towards him.
“What?” he shouted. “Are you applauding me? You fucks! This isn’t part of the show. They were going to torture her and you were going to watch.”
The man who’d started the applause came towards him, arms wide. In English, he said, “Was this Peppi’s idea? Did he send you?”
Breathing heavily, Gabriel turned to check on the two men he pu
t down. The one with the broken jaw was unconscious, blood leaking from his mouth. The one he’d crippled was moaning softly to himself, holding his ruined knee with both hands. He turned back. Grabbed the man’s satin lapels. And thrust his face close.
“The show’s over.”
Then he stepped back and punched him in the throat. The man went down. Now there were screams. Two or three other men sprang at Gabriel, but they were amateurs. Or perhaps, they had once been professionals, but the passage of time had rendered them shadows of their former selves. Hands were scratching at his face, and feet were going in. One lucky punch caught him across the bridge of his nose and for a second, stars flickered in his vision. Then all went dark. Just for a second.
The lights came back on a split second later, but this was not a candlelit dining room in a Zurich dining club.
This was the hot, hard light of the African sun.
Close to Contact
ROUNDS were coming in fast, like a swarm of hornets in 7.62mm calibre. White-hot, and very, very angry. The machetes wouldn’t be far behind. Gabriel could feel the adrenaline swamping his system, but he maintained discipline. Fight our way back to the extract point. Stay tight. He dealt with the militia fighters systematically as they arrived in front of him. Putting them down with expert blows to the soft, vulnerable spots his instructors had shown him. Throat, groin, solar plexus, kidney.
The second member of his patrol was right there; they were back-to-back. She stopped the last of them and then dragged him away.
“Come on, Gabriel,” she said in an urgent whisper. “Let’s get you out of here before the police arrive.”
“OK, OK. Let’s go,” he said.
Gabriel looked up from the bed. Eli was coming towards him with a glass of water. He realised he was in his hotel room. He pushed himself up onto his elbows.
“Eli! What are you doing here? How did I get back here? I was at a club. With Walti. I mean Krieger, the bank manager.”
She sat beside him and held the glass out. “Drink this.”
He took a sip and then placed the glass on the bedside table.
“What time is it?”
“Eleven. You’ve been out for a few hours. I gave you a sedative.”
The memory of the tableau at the club flashed across his brain.
“That room. I think I hurt a lot of people. The police’ll be looking for me.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not so sure they will. And yes, for the record, you did hurt a lot of people. So did I. But they’re not going to be calling the authorities. Not with their little Nazi amateur dramatics club in the spotlight.”
“What about the woman they were using? Where is she?”
“I met her coming out. She’s in a safe place now, with some people I know here.”
Gabriel sat up and swung his legs off the bed.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m your minder. I’m minding you.” She smiled her disarming smile.
“You were following me.”
“Not exactly. Well, yes, I mean in a technical sense I was following you. But wasn’t it better that I had your back?”
“Walti? I left him in the bar. He would have heard the racket.”
“Don’t worry about Walti. You can see him tomorrow.”
Gabriel called in at Händler und Ziegelhaus at ten the following morning on the way to the airport. While Eli waited in the cab – an immaculate cream E-Class – he went inside, after following the same routine with the gorilla on the door. The receptionist, Trudi, was on duty and she smiled when she saw him.
“Good Morning, Mr Wolfe. Are you here to see Herr Krieger again?”
“Yes, I am. But no appointment this time, so if he’s busy, I can leave a message.”
“No, no, he has the morning free and said to show you straight into his office if you came in.”
Sitting opposite Krieger in his office, Gabriel didn’t waste any time.
“I’m sorry for deserting you last night, Walti. I had an episode related to a health condition. A colleague took me back to my hotel.”
The old man smiled and placed his liver-spotted hands palm down on the desk.
“Yes. I heard a commotion outside the bar. Lots of shouting. Are you all right now? Some people were calling for the police to be summoned.”
“I’m fine. Listen, did you know what that private function was?”
Krieger’s eyes flicked away from Gabriel’s own, then back again.
“Tell me.”
“It was some kind of Neo-Nazi event. A dinner. They were re-enacting—”
He found he couldn’t go on. The memory was jolting his pulse and he fought to restore some sort of internal balance, falling silent.
“You know, Gabriel, yesterday I said I was an old man. And that I had heard much bad news in my lifetime. I have also experienced much bad news at first hand.”
He stopped speaking and unclipped the gold cufflink on his left wrist. He folded the cuff back on itself and then plucked at the sleeve until it slid up his forearm.
Gabriel inhaled sharply. He was looking at the remains of the tattoo he had glimpsed the previous day. It was the letter B followed by five crude digits. He looked up at Krieger.
“You were in the camps?”
Krieger nodded. “Herzogenbusch. It was in the Netherlands. In Vught. I was six when I was taken there with my parents. They died, but I was adopted by the other prisoners. They shared their food with me, tried to shield me. Somehow, I survived until the Canadian Army liberated the camp in 1944.”
Gabriel pointed at Krieger’s forehead.
“I thought maybe that was a duelling scar. Did they do that to you?” Krieger nodded. “But then how are you, I mean, Swiss banks were notorious for their connections to the Nazis. And you’re running one?”
Krieger smiled. “After the war, Gabriel, I didn’t go back home. There was nothing there for me, and nobody. I left for Palestine, as it was then called. I spent the next twenty years living in Israel. I went to work for Mossad as a young man, tracking down Nazis. We developed a plan to track them through gold and looted art treasures in the European banking system. And, to cut a long story short, as you say, here I am. A respectable Swiss banker with a good, solid Swiss-German name. The bank is real, by the way. The profits fund our operations here. Every month, I send a report to my handler in Israel, and he takes such action as he feels is necessary. But time is running out. For me. For my fellow survivors. And for the Nazis themselves. Nobody is getting any younger.”
“What will you do about Das Haus der Tochter?” Gabriel asked, realising he’d leaned right forward in his chair and was staring intently as the old man told his story.
“I shall email my handler. The Swiss police will no doubt prefer to stay away.”
A suspicion that had been swirling far out to sea in Gabriel’s brain made landfall.
“You know Eli, don’t you?”
Krieger smiled.
“Smart boy. Yes, I know Eli very well. We first met when she began working for Mossad. We keep in touch. She let me know you’d be coming.”
Still trying to process Krieger’s story, Gabriel reached down and pulled the bearer bonds from his briefcase.
“I actually came in to give you these,” he said, handing them to Krieger across the desk. “If your documents specialist says they’re genuine, please open my account. If they’re not, burn them or put them in a museum. I leave it to you.”
Krieger smiled. “Very well, Gabriel. Thank you for placing your trust in me. And for your actions last night.”
Then Gabriel’s phone buzzed. He knew it would be Eli hurrying him along.
“I have to go. Thank you, Walti. For sharing your story with me. I am sorry.”
The old man smiled. “No need. I am alive. I am doing important work. Thanks be to Him. And one last thing. As we are to be friends, I think you should call me by my Hebrew name. I am Amos Peled. Amos means bearer of burd
en and Peled means steel. I chose it very carefully.”
Gabriel stood and offered his hand.
“Goodbye Amos. Shalom.”
“Shalom, Gabriel.”
Outside, Eli was staring out through the taxi’s wide window. When Gabriel appeared she mouthed something at him and tapped her watch. He was inside the car a few moments later.
“I was about to come and haul you out of there. How did you get on with Walti?”
Gabriel smiled. “Amos is a charming man, as it would appear you already know.”
She smiled back. “He could be helpful in finding Sasha Beck. And her client. People who can drop three million on a contract generally don’t bank on the High Street.”
“Maybe. And he’s got contacts at Mossad, too.”
“So have I,” she said, a little indignantly.
“What do you suggest then?”
“OK. This somebody, let’s call them Fury. No. Better idea. We’ll call them Ebrah.” She pronounced it eb-raw. “It’s the Hebrew word. What do they want?
“At this point, I’m not exactly sure. They’re sending a message to me.”
“Obviously. But what else?”
Gabriel furrowed his brow. “They killed my friend. My best friend. Then Dusty. My comrade. Then they destroyed my car.”
“And what does that say to you?”
“It says, they want to take away things, people, who I care about. It’s why I’m worried about Britta.”
“But why not simply go after you? You said Sasha Beck shot your friend with a rifle. Anyone that good could just as easily have killed you.”
“So they don’t want me dead. They want me alive. To witness everything.”
Eli shook her head. “It’s so systematic. And so high risk. Who breaks into the fucking SAS? You must have really pissed somebody off.”
“Then let’s make me bait. I’ll put myself right out there in harm’s way. If they don’t want me dead, maybe that’ll draw them out. Maybe Sasha will confront me. I reckon I could take her in a one-on-one.”