A constable had called every prison within a fifty-mile range from where they’d picked up Dick Mitey. And then in a one-hundred-mile range. And finally, every prison in Germany.
Not a single one had any records of a Dick Mitey as an inmate. The constable was stumped. There were no records of a visa application to enter the European Union, either. Whoever he was, he was here illegally.
As far as anyone at the Berlin Police Department could tell, Dick Mitey had just appeared out of nowhere. Now, the constable couldn’t prove that Dick had done anything wrong or illegal, per se. Truthfully, the constable didn’t believe him capable of intentional wrongdoing at all.
But he didn’t have a residence in Germany, was in the country illegally and had nowhere to go.
Releasing Dick Mitey would be to condemn him to Berlin’s streets as a homeless person.
The Berlin Police Department was in a bit of a perplexing situation. That was until the man with a brush cut and stern features walked in and offered to take him off their hands.
Now, usually this did not fall within the usual confines of how the Berlin Police Department operated, but the man presented a few official-looking documents, explaining that the man they had incarcerated, Dick Mitey was a mental patient.
“He’s confused. He got into a car accident as a child, and it’s muddled him a bit, you know?”
The constable did indeed know, thinking back to his grandfather’s funeral where his cousin Glen had re-appeared after a long absence and had driven his family crazy. He’d been in a car accident as well, and it had left him, Cousin Glen, a bit touched.
So Dick Mitey was finally released to the care of the nondescript man with the vague military look, but not without incident.
The constable reported that Dick Mitey had initially acted overjoyed to hear he was being released. He had a massive smile on his face and was even humming a tune to himself.
That was until he saw the person who had come to pick him up.
“Wait, who is this?” he demanded shrilly.
The constable had looked at the man and had been comforted to see that he had a warm expression on his face.
“You don’t remember me, Dick? It’s been a while, I know.”
“I’ve never met you,” Dick had answered with conviction. “What do you want?”
“Oh Dick, we’ve met many times. You don’t remember? I’m sorry, officer. We were worried that he might do this. Come along Dick, you don’t want to create a scene.”
The constable stayed silent, watching the exchange between the two with bated breath. Dick Mitey’s objections indeed seemed real, and he had never displayed confusion like this before.
“You’ve got to help me,” Dick had cried, turning to the officer. “They’re going to kill me!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Dick.” The average looking man had grabbed his wrist, a little harder than the constable would have liked. “I’m sorry again, officer. Once we get him his medication, he’ll brighten right up again.”
The constable was more than skeptical. But the paperwork which the man had dropped off was in order. It wasn’t from prison at all, he noticed. It was from a mental hospital.
Did mental hospitals use jumpsuits with numbers on them to identify their patients, as they’d found near Dick Mitey? The constable wasn’t sure.
“I was worried that something like this might happen,” said the man. “I brought help.” A few other men emerged from the entranceway and forced Dick away into their car.
“You can’t let them take me!” the lanky man was screaming at the top of his shrill lungs. “They’re not – I’ve never seen them before – Black Eagle!”
“Thank you for your help, officer,” said the average looking man. “It is much appreciated.”
“Heeellllp!” Screamed Dick Mitey. “Anybody! Put me back in prison, anything but this.”
The car door closed, muffling the sounds of his screams.
“What is your contact information,” asked the constable. Something was suspicious here, and he had no intention of letting three thugs kidnap a man right under his nose.
The man gave the constable his ID cards and the prisoner request form. Plugging it through the Berlin P.D’s system, the constable was surprised to see that it all checked out correctly. He apologized to the strange man.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad that we have officers who do their due diligence!” the man said, stepping outside.
As the car drove away, the constable noted the license plate.
It never hurt to be cautious, after all.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sarah Nieminen sat in a coffee shop in downtown Berlin dressed in shorts and a tan shirt and evaluated her options.
The Black Eagle had taken Dick from the holding cell, as she had discovered a few hours earlier. That wasn’t surprising to Sarah in the least, but she’d harbored a desperate thought that she would somehow get to Dick Mitey before they did.
The CIA operative was intentionally in the busiest coffee shop she could find. There was no doubt that Adrian had agents everywhere on the lookout for her. For all she knew they had already located her, perhaps even from the moment she’d touched down in Germany.
Sarah had taken precautions to avoid detection, of course, but there was only so much that she could do to stay hidden without the substantial resources of the CIA behind her. She’d flown into Frankfurt, for instance, instead of direct to Berlin where there would almost certainly be many spying eyes in the airport.
The long train ride between the two cities gave her plenty of time to think about her strategy. There wasn’t much to it, as it happened. She was trying to find a needle in a haystack, except the needle had eyes and was looking for her, too.
More than once she had questioned her recklessness in flying to Germany by herself.
No time for that now, she had eventually realized. It was done, she had already committed to Germany so she would have to see it through to the end, either way.
Adrian Vandervoort headquartered in a building not too far from the German parliament building, the Reichstag. The intel was over a year old, so it was not as reliable as Sarah would have liked it to be, but it was better than nothing.
Since then, of course, Adrian had disappeared, but it was a good starting point. If she could get into that building, there was a chance that she’d be able to uncover something – anything – which might point her towards her target.
Adrian was in the city. She knew it, he was skulking around somewhere. It was a comforting thought if you took out the implications of course. Why else organize a trap like this for her?
She finished her coffee, black with two creams, and stood up, carefully scouring the crowd for anybody that looked a bit off. She couldn’t see anyone, so she packed up and walked outside the coffee shop.
Her silenced service pistol was safely hidden away under her jacket.
Now and then Sarah would stop and snap a picture of something. The Reichstag building, beautiful with its oversized dome and harsh architecture was visible in the distance beyond the protective columns of the Brandenburg Gate.
She snapped photos of both. She was playing the part of a tourist, after all. She caught a good look at the building detailed in the old intel report.
From the outside, the building certainly looked non-threatening. It was bone-white, with the exaggerated awnings typical of the neoclassical style of architecture. A few flower beds hugged the building, and two massive stone lions stood guard outside the main entrance, but there were no big trees or shrubberies for Sarah to hide.
From there she had gone to the closest public library which the manager of the hotel she’d been staying in had suggested and had asked for the blueprint plans for the building.
Surprisingly enough, it had worked. Sarah had fiddled with her long brown hair while the portly librarian had stumbled around trying to find the right book.
Once she had the blueprints, she gasped. The building was massive,
and she would only have a few hours to get in, find the information she was looking for and get out.
There were a few offices which Sarah had discounted right away. The massive rooms were undoubtedly conference rooms. Adrian’s office would be more appropriately sized, but most likely large as well. She couldn’t fathom that the ego of the man would allow him to have anything less than the best, after all.
That left no more than twenty offices which could belong to Adrian Vandervort Sarah sighed and rechecked her gun.
That was a little less daunting. It was a starting point.
She walked a circuitous route back to her hotel. It would be almost impossible for someone to keep hidden as they followed her.
Finally, Sarah checked into the hotel. She glanced at the clock. Still a few hours until nightfall.
The bed looked comfortable and inviting. Sarah briefly considered throwing her shoes off and taking a nap. She would, after all, need all the energy she could get that night.
That wasn’t the smart thing to do, however. Even though Sarah was an unusually light sleeper, even the slightest delay in waking up could be the difference between capture and freedom.
She turned the lights off, and she waited.
It wasn’t any good to head down to the office complex until the middle of the night anyway, which gave her some time to spare.
Sarah was reviewing the plan in her head when she heard motion outside her door.
The clock on the table read 1:07.
She’d been careful enough that most of her actions would have been under their radar. Most of them. If this Black Eagle organization was as wide-reaching as she suspected, it could only be a matter of time until they found her.
Sarah froze, being sure to stay completely still. She knew that she would have the advantage for a precious few moments after the intruder entered the room. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness a long time ago whereas his eyes would take a few precious moments before he could see anything.
That would be her opportunity. She would take him out quickly and drag him inside. She wasn’t proud of it, but she knew more than a few ways to make people talk.
Sarah smiled. The door opened slowly, gliding silently on oiled hinges. Outside there were two bodies.
No matter, she thought. She still had the advantage. But what is that?
The second assailant had brought up a barrel-sized contraption and was fiddling with some switches on the side.
Suddenly a bright light appeared. It was a large halogen lamp, and it was aimed directly at Sarah.
“Argh,” she cried, the bright light burning her retinas. They had used her trick against her, she realized. They knew that her vision would have adjusted to the darkness, so they brought the light to compensate for it.
She couldn’t see anymore, other than vague, blurry shapes. And there were two of them and only one of her. She felt a presence in front of her and swung her arm as hard as she could.
But the blow missed, knocking her off balance.
A fist exploded in her stomach. The force of the blow knocked the air out of her, and she fell to her knees, gasping in pain.
I should have known, she thought. She was only now starting to regain her vision. She felt a needle pierce her neck, injecting sedatives into her bloodstream.
Too much, she thought. The dangers of over-sedation were well known to her. If they’d given her too much, her heart would stop.
The drug acted quickly. One moment Sarah was awake, clutching her stomach in pain. The next moment she keeled over. The sedatives had kicked in, and Sarah Nieminen fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
As the car holding Dick pulled out of the station, Dick sighed. There was only one person who could be behind something like this.
Adrian.
“What do you want with me?” He asked of the bland featured man who had gotten him out of jail.
The man looked at him with a cruel and sadistic look in his eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be grateful?” he asked.
Dick slunk back into the cushion of the back seat. He tasted bile in his throat and swallowed. These men made him very nervous.
The car trip didn’t last very long. Soon enough they stopped in front of an ominous looking building. Not-too-gently they helped him out of the car. He looked up. He’d seen this building before, been inside it even.
He remembered the stone lions, silent guards standing vigil over the entrance. Dick Mitey sighed. It was time to see Adrian.
But they didn’t. Instead, Dick found himself in another holding cell.
Dick Mitey was getting very tired of prison cells.
Fortunately, this time it was only a few hours before the door opened again. They had been waiting for something. What that was, Dick had no idea.
Nevertheless, Dick soon found himself standing in the familiar but foreign settings of Adrian’s office.
It had been a lifetime since he had last set foot in there.
“Well met, my boy,” Adrian said. “I must admit that you have surprised me.”
Dick stared down at Adrian’s blonde, striking features. He could see himself in those cold, uncaring eyes. His reflection looked small and insignificant. His eyes stuck out from his head much too far, and his head was too big for his body.
“How?” Dick asked.
“You have exceeded my wildest expectations. Never did I think, at the time of our first meeting, that you could have been so helpful to our cause.” Adrian smiled sardonically.
Dick wondered what he was doing here. Had Adrian brought him in specifically to gloat about how he had ruined Dick’s? That was wantonly cruel.
Dick looked into Adrian’s brown eyes.
He really did.
“I don’t like to swear,” Dick Mitey began, hoping that his Mama’s ghost would forgive him. “But you’re just a raging asshole.”
Whether or not he knew it, Dick had changed throughout the past year. Adrian had changed as well, he could see. Physically, anyway.
His aquiline nose wasn’t quite as perfect as he remembered it, but somehow that made his face all the more ruggedly handsome, which Dick felt wasn’t fair at all.
“I think we both knew it would come to this,” Dick said, speaking the words that he had rehearsed in the car the entire way over from the prison.
“Quite honestly, I did not know,” Adrian retorted. “There were many circumstances which have played out in my head, but this was never one of them.”
“Oh,” Dick said. He scrunched his face in frustration and anger. He didn’t quite understand why, but he felt offended by Adrian’s statement.
“Can I interest you in a glass of rum?” Adrian asked. “Sit down.”
Adrian circled his desk, poured himself a glass of rum from a crystal decanter and sat down, putting his feet up.
“I’ll stand,” Dick said, looking around the room. It was as he remembered it. But now he saw it all through a different light. They weren’t only souvenirs of his travels around the world; they were trophies of his past conquests hanging on the wall, like notches on a bedpost.
“I took that from a Japanese mark,” he said coldly, following Dick’s gaze to a pair of samurai swords on the wall. “His ancestor had been a Shogun. He cried and whimpered and begged for mercy until I pulled the trigger. He promised me wealth and women. It didn’t work. That one is from a Maori tribesman.”
Dick said nothing. He held the blonde man’s brown eyes in his gaze.
“What happens now, my boy?” Adrian asked after a period of silence.
“I kill you,” Dick said in a voice smaller than a mouse.
“You’ll have to speak up. Be sure to speak from the diaphragm when you’re speaking the King’s English.”
“I’m going to kill you,” he said, a little bit louder this time.
“I must admit, my boy, I may have underestimated you a tad,” he said after a moment with a smile that only tugged the corners of hi
s lips. “But only a tad, although you continue to surprise me. Both with your impetuousness and your stupidity. If we didn’t know each other personally, I would have simply ordered them to kill you.”
Dick gulped. The rich British tones of Adrian’s voice were statements. He wasn’t bragging, Dick realized. He was deadly serious.
“I have little time for this game, so I’ll give you one final chance. A choice, if you will. For you see, my boy, after all, you’ve done for me it’s the least I can do. Leave now, and I’ll send you back home. With consequences, of course. Nothing is for free, after all.”
Far From Ordinary Page 21
