Private Berlin
Page 22
She pushed and twisted the cabinet to the left and nothing happened. It felt bolted into the ground and to the wall. But when she twisted it to the right, it disengaged and swiveled out along with a piece of the wall.
She pulled out a light, drew her pistol, and eased inside, finding herself in a narrow, high-ceilinged passage that ran the length of the outer room. When she’d determined the space was clear of threat, she groped the wall by the door, felt a switch, and turned it on, illuminating a secret gallery behind the gallery.
Mattie stood there, looking all around, confused at first as to what she was seeing, and what it all meant. The walls of the secret gallery were decorated with a loose collage of trinkets, jewelry, and odd pieces of clothes; and toys, newspaper clippings, and purses and wallets; and older and more recent snapshots of people, men and women and children.
Mostly children.
And suddenly, the collage made sense and the shock that followed was a blow to her stomach that rocked her mind.
“Mattie?” Burkhart called from outside. “You in there?”
“Yes,” she managed.
Burkhart ducked inside and looked around. “What is this?”
“I think it’s a trophy room.”
CHAPTER 117
HIGH COMMISSAR DIETRICH wanted the secret gallery sealed the moment he saw it, which Mattie understood completely. It was a forensics investigator’s mother lode of information and evidence.
“Let them see it before you do,” Mattie suggested.
“Who?” Dietrich asked.
“Frei and Krainer,” Mattie said. “See if they recognize anything. I think that gallery is a trophy room, but unless someone can identify something in there, it’s just somebody’s weird obsession.”
She thought he was going to argue, but then he nodded and said, “I suppose it can’t hurt.”
Mattie went outside. There were television trucks at either end of the block and klieg lights flaring. She found Ilona Frei still standing with Krainer. She told them what they’d found and asked if they’d be willing to go inside. Krainer said he did not think he could. The tidal wave of emotions in the past several hours was too much to deal with as it was, though he did say he’d be willing to look at a later time.
But Ilona Frei said, “I’ll go.”
“You sure?” Krainer asked.
She nodded, tucked her chin, and walked with Mattie into the main gallery. Her eyes perked up and she looked all around her at the jumble of art as they walked toward the doorway into the secret gallery.
But then Ilona Frei stopped suddenly and stared up at the mask collection, her eyes roving all over them and fear building in her carriage.
“What is it?” Mattie asked.
“They’re almost all of monsters, aren’t they?”
Mattie had not noticed before. But it was true. Falk’s monsters leered down as Mattie led Ilona inside the secret gallery.
Burkhart, Weigel, and Dietrich watched Ilona as her attention rolled slowly and carefully over the collage on the wall, her mouth open as if in a trance, her fingers passing above the items.
“Don’t touch,” Mattie said, following her closely.
“No,” Ilona said. “These are haunted things, aren’t they?”
“I suppose they are.”
Ten feet into the gallery, looking at the right wall, Ilona made a little gasp and halted. “No.” Tears boiled from her eyes as she moaned, “No.”
CHAPTER 118
THE OLD, CURLING snapshot was thumbtacked to the wall. In it two girls in bathing suits were leaning up against the legs of a woman in a bathing suit. Beside it, hanging on a chain from a nail, was an open tarnished silver locket with a tiny photograph inside of a beautiful young woman.
“Is that you and Ilse at the beach?” Mattie asked her.
Ilona nodded through her tears. “And that’s my locket and my mother. She gave the locket and the picture of her to me when I turned eight. It was her mother’s locket. Falk took it from me the night we were brought to the slaughterhouse.”
She wiped away her tears and reached for the locket with joy and disbelief, saying, “I haven’t seen a picture of her in thirty years.”
Mattie caught her hand. “You can’t touch, Ilona. Not yet. But you’ll have the locket, I promise you.”
Ilona looked at it longingly and then suddenly appeared exhausted. “I need to go home, Mattie,” she said in a dull, flat voice. “I need to sleep. And we need to be at the clinic early in the morning.”
Mattie wanted to look further, to see if there was any memento of Chris in the collage, but she checked her watch. It was nearly 10 p.m. Niklas was already in bed. Aunt C probably was getting ready.
“Take her home,” Dietrich said. “There’s nothing more you can do here.”
“I’ll come with you,” Burkhart said.
Mattie said, “I don’t—”
“You do,” he said. “Falk is still out there.”
Mattie gave in because now she was suddenly too tired to argue. She’d done her job. They’d all done their job. They knew who Falk was. They’d exposed his role in the death of Chris and dozens if not scores of others. Beyond this, the case was a manhunt and nothing more.
They went out the back of Falk’s building with Dietrich, who was making sure that Kripo provided Krainer with protection overnight. Krainer told Ilona Frei he would contact her soon.
Leaving by the rear allowed Mattie, Burkhart, and Ilona Frei to avoid the media circus at either end of the closed block and to arrive quickly at Mattie’s car.
Mattie heard thunder rumbling in the distance as she climbed in the passenger seat. She thought to call home but then was overwhelmed by fatigue. She drowsed in the front seat as Burkhart navigated them north toward Ernst-Reuter-Platz and Strasse des 17 Juni, the street that celebrates Berlin’s reunification.
They were heading east when Mattie’s cell phone rang in her pocket.
She tugged it out and was surprised to see that Niklas was calling.
“What are you doing up?” she asked by way of greeting. “And why have you and Aunt C not been answering your phones?”
She heard a clicking on the line and then a smooth voice purred, “Dear Frau Engel, I’m afraid Aunt C’s rather tied up at the moment. And Niklas has been with me since school let out, such a pleasant young man. We’ve taken a drive in the country. Why don’t you and Ilona Frei come out and join us?”
BOOK FIVE
THE VISIBLE MAN
CHAPTER 119
STUNNED AND CORED through with fear for Niklas, Mattie whispered, “Falk?”
Burkhart snatched the phone from her and turned on the speaker just in time to hear Falk say, “An old name.”
Panic-stricken now, Mattie pleaded, “Let him go. Please, he’s just a boy.”
“Yes, he is,” Falk said icily. “So listen carefully if you ever want to see him alive again. I want you to get Ilona Frei, and I want you to bring her to me. You and Ilona. No one else. If you do bring someone else, anyone else, I will cut your son’s throat, ear to ear, just the way I used to bleed out hogs for my father.
“Do you understand?”
Mattie glanced at Burkhart, who had gone cold and hard at the wheel, slowing, looking for a place to stop. Ilona Frei softly whimpered in the backseat. Burkhart looked at Ilona, pressed his finger to his lips, and nodded to Mattie.
“All right,” Mattie said shakily. “Where do you want me to bring her?”
“Where any mother might have looked for a lost child in the last days of the East German Republic,” Falk snarled. “You have ninety minutes to get here or your boy dies.”
“That’s not enough—”
“It’s what you’ve got,” Falk said and hung up.
CHAPTER 120
RACING SOUTH AS the storm threatened, Mattie stared into the darkness, doing everything in her power not to collapse.
In the backseat, Ilona Frei was turning hysterical. “You’re not going to let
him have me, are you? You wouldn’t trade me for your son, would you?”
For a second Mattie was so stunned at the question that she did not know what to say, but then she shook her head. “No. No, of course not.”
“Call the police,” Ilona pleaded.
“That could get Niklas killed,” Burkhart said.
“Then call your friends at Private!”
With Falk’s warning about bringing anyone else along still ringing in her ears, she looked to Burkhart and said: “You’re the hostage rescuer. What do we do?”
“Is there specialized gear in the trunk?”
“Yes, it’s Private’s car.”
“Give me the particulars.”
Mattie struggled to think. “Two bulletproof vests. One 9 mm Heckler and Koch automatic assault rifle. Two twenty-shot magazines in 9 mm.”
“Night vision?” he asked.
“A scope.”
“No goggles.”
“Just the scope.”
“Radios? Cameras?”
“Two earbuds with Bluetooth mics, and two fiber-optic units.”
“Can they feed wireless to a website?”
“Private Berlin’s.”
“So I could access a feed from my phone?”
“If coverage is good.”
“Describe the layout of the orphanage.”
Between Mattie and Ilona they gave it to him. The front entry. The offices on the immediate right. The kitchen. The dining hall. The staircase. The rooms upstairs. The rotting floors. The caved-in roof.
“Is there a rear entrance?” Burkhart asked.
Ilona said there were three: one at the kitchen, and two others at either end of the building that led to back staircases to the upper floors.
They passed Halle and headed east. With every mile, Mattie felt more and more on the verge of a nervous breakdown. First her mother. Then Chris. And now Niklas? Though she considered herself spiritual, Mattie was not by nature religious.
Still, as they got closer and closer to the ruins of Waisenhaus 44, she found herself praying to God to save her son. He was only a boy. Nine years old. Her little boy. Her most precious gift.
CHAPTER 121
BURKHART’S FIRST PLAN called for Ilona Frei to remain behind in the car and call Private and Berlin Kripo while he and Mattie made a rescue attempt.
“But he’ll kill Niklas if I’m not there,” Ilona said.
“I’ll tell him I couldn’t find you,” Mattie replied. “He only gave us ninety minutes. You’ll stay in the car. Let Burkhart and me handle it.”
Ilona chewed on her knuckle in the backseat. Then she shook her head.
“No. I won’t do that. I’ve spent my life running from him. It’s driven me insane on more than one occasion. If I’m going to have any hope of a life, I have to face him, tell him what I think of him, what he did to me, and the others. And then, honestly, I’d like to see him die.”
“New plan then,” Burkhart said as he slowed to a stop about a mile from the orphanage. “We get suited up, and then five hundred yards shy of the place, you let me out. You two park on the road, go up the drive and in the front. I’ll follow through the woods and circle round the back.”
They got out and took the tactical gear from the trunk. Mattie and Ilona Frei put on the bulletproof vests under their jackets.
“You’ll be unprotected, Burkhart,” Mattie said.
“But unseen,” Burkhart replied, pulling out the H&K rifle and night-vision scope. “This guy doesn’t know what one invisible man can do to another.”
Mattie clipped the tiny fiber-optic camera through the buttonhole on her lapel. She did the same with Ilona.
“Bury the bud,” Burkhart said. “The mic, too.”
Mattie pushed the bud deep into her ear and slipped the mic under her wristwatch before climbing in the driver’s seat with Ilona as front passenger and Burkhart in the rear.
“We should call Private,” Mattie said.
Burkhart dialed Jack Morgan’s number and explained what was happening. Morgan was furious that they had not contacted him or Kripo earlier.
“We’re trying to save my son’s life, Jack,” Mattie insisted.
“We’re heading to the airport,” Morgan said. “We’re renting a helicopter.”
“No,” Burkhart said. “Not unless you can land a mile away. He’s smart. He’ll know we’ve called in backup if he hears a chopper.”
“I’ll call Dietrich,” Morgan replied and hung up.
Mattie put the car in gear and drove. A few silent moments later, rain began to spatter the windows. Lightning flashed in the distance, but it was enough to reveal the blades of the huge wind turbines spinning in the breeze.
“It’s right up ahead on the left,” she said. “Five hundred yards.”
“Ready?” Burkhart asked as she slowed to a stop.
“No.”
“Ilona?”
“Yes.” But her response was wrought with doubt and fear.
Mattie twisted in her seat when Burkhart opened the rear door.
“Please tell me Niklas’s going to be okay.”
Burkhart put his giant hand on hers as the rain began to pour. “He’s going to be, Mattie. You just have to have faith.”
CHAPTER 122
FRIENDS, FELLOW BERLINERS, I am standing by a big pine tree in the light rain just inside the woods northeast of the rear entrance to the orphanage. I am wet but more than pleased when I hear the crunch of tires as a car pulls off onto the shoulder out on the main road south of Waisenhaus 44.
A moment later I hear a car door open, but no dome light goes on inside. A second door opens. Still no light.
It makes me feel that my suspicions were justified. I slip around the back of the pine tree and press myself tightly to it, chilled to the bone, watching that rear entrance, figuring that this will be how the counterterrorism expert Burkhart will try to outflank me while Ilona Frei and Mattie Engel go through the front door.
They’ll be scared shitless, I think, and my heart races.
A mother. A son. A ghost from my past. Their combined fear.
Once Burkhart is dealt with it will be like old times, I decide. One last celebration before I move on.
I stay frozen to the tree, waiting after they’ve gone. One minute. Two minutes. At three minutes, I’m starting to think I’ve overthought things and that I should be moving quickly into the orphanage before they can find Nick.
But at three minutes thirty seconds, I become aware of a change in the darkness in front of me. And then I see it, the subtle dim green glow of some sort of night-vision device.
I cling tighter to the tree, my pistol in my right hand, aimed toward the glow. But then I lose it. Gone.
I peer and peer and see nothing. I’m running out of time.
A twig snaps. I slide around the tree, moving the gun toward the sound.
I hear a low voice: “Go in slow. Let him talk to you first.”
At thirty yards: a rectangular glow, much brighter.
He’s looking at his cell phone.
Horrible time to be texting, I think, and shoot twice.
I hear both rounds hit flesh and bone, a gasp, a cough, and then a satisfying crash that’s soon drowned by the rain pelting the woods.
CHAPTER 123
“BURKHART?” MATTIE MURMURED into her mic as they approached the ruins of Waisenhaus 44. She’d heard him gasp and cough. Now all she could make out was static and rain transmitting through the bud.
“What is it?” Ilona whispered. “What’s wrong?”
For a second Mattie didn’t know what to do. That gasp. That cough.
And then it just didn’t matter. Niklas was somewhere inside the ruins of the orphanage. She was going to bring him out of there alive.
Alive, she said to herself over and over as she got out her gun, and they climbed up onto the porch of the place. Mattie led Ilona through the busted front door past the entrance to what had been Hariat Ledwig’s office.
But they heard nothing but the rain and wind. They checked the dining room and the kitchen. Nothing.
They returned to the staircase, and again Mattie cried, “Falk!”
“Drop the gun,” Falk said from the shadows. “Toss it behind you.”
Mattie hesitated.
“Drop it if you ever want to see your son again.”
Mattie tossed the pistol back behind her. It clattered away.
“Flashlight too,” Falk said.
She complied, and then she saw her shadow and Ilona’s on the risers of the old staircase as Falk shined her light on them.
“Climb,” he said, then made that clicking noise in his throat.
Ilona panicked at the sound and tried to make a run for it. But Falk grabbed her by the hair and yanked her off her feet. She began to shriek.
“Scream all you want,” Falk snarled. “There’s no one who can hear you. We’re miles from nowhere and we have unfinished business.” He glared at Mattie. “Get upstairs. Your boy’s waiting for you.”
Mattie climbed up into the darkness with Ilona moaning behind her. They reached the landing, and Falk directed them down the hall into a room, which faced the rear of the orphanage, looking out over farmland and woods.
His flashlight cut the room, and Mattie thought she saw rope hanging from the exposed beam, before the light focused on the floor.
Falk told them to kneel. When they had, he instructed them to take off their bulletproof vests and clasp their hands behind their heads. He was behind Mattie the entire time, and she never got a good look at his face. He put zip-tie restraints on their wrists and ankles, and then came around the front of them.
In the slanted light of the flashlights brightening the room, Mattie thought that Falk’s face and head resembled a wig mannequin’s. He was bald, had no eyebrows, and his skin was strangely smooth, with ears tightly pinned back. “Don’t think you’re ever getting out of here, hmmm?” Falk said. “Your friend, Burkhart, the big guy? I put two rounds in his chest. He’s not going anywhere ever again.”