The back of his neck went cold. Someone had been tracking him for a long time, and he hadn’t had a clue.
Alex turned his attention back to the body. He rolled the corpse in the sheets and wound layers of plastic wrap around the still-warm human bundle. It was hard work. He scrubbed the blood off the dark wood and then went into the bathroom, where he used some bleach to get rid of as much of the spattered blood as he could. The cleanup took a long time.
Daniella put her suitcase in the backseat of the Giulietta. On the table in the living room she left six hundred euros and a note apologizing for her hasty departure and the broken TV and providing her credit-card number to pay for the damage.
They crammed the corpse into the trunk of the car. They drove through the forest in a thick fog that curled itself around the trunks of the bare trees. They followed the signs south, toward Siena. A few minutes later, Alex left the roadway and drove up to the top of a hill, where he dumped the naked body near a ruined building. He burned the plastic wrap and bloody sheets in a garbage pit. Then he returned to the roadway and headed in the opposite direction. His hands gripping the steering wheel throbbed.
They turned onto the highway to Florence. After a while, Alex pulled into an Autogrill rest area, stopping at the far end of the large parking lot. Daniella went in alone while he waited in the car.
She returned with coffee, pastries, medical supplies, and extra large black gloves. She undid his improvised bandages and bathed the gaping wounds in Betadine. Alex breathed deeply. Then she wrapped his hands in clean white bandages and pulled the gloves over them. They pressed painfully on the open wounds.
“Where are we going, Dad?”
She’d called him dad. Maybe she did it without thinking.
“Milan. We’ll take a plane from there.”
“Are you coming home with me?”
“I wish I could.”
Her face fell.
Daniella closed her eyes and leaned her head on the window. It was quiet in the car. Jane would still be asleep in the house in Grunewald. It was too early to call.
“I knew you’d come,” she said softly, her eyes still shut. He stroked her head with his gloved hand. A little before five in the morning, they passed Florence on the way north to Bologna. It was still dark out.
She was strong. The harsh blows she’d suffered hadn’t broken her. Look how she’d run out of the shower without a moment’s hesitation and plunged the knife into his attacker’s back, saving both their lives. She might be young, but she was stronger than him, and ten times tougher.
Trucks were racing past in the opposite lane, their headlights blinding.
He had to force himself not to cry.
EMILIA-ROMAGNA, ITALY | 04:58
Daniella’s eyelids twitched. They were nearing Parma. He called Jane and hung up after eight rings. She must be in the shower.
He rang her again at six thirty.
No answer.
A cord of concern wrapped itself around his heart.
Paris. Unreadable Paris. The man of the dead body and the stakeout in the forest.
He tried Jane’s number a third time, with no luck.
Paris. Shit!
Was it possible that Paris wasn’t really Paris?
Apprehensive, he tried Jane again.
Still no answer.
He called Butthead.
“Check the logs of the emergency services in Berlin starting from last night. Check the hospitals.” He kept his voice low. His stomach was churning.
“What are we looking for?”
“Jane Thompson, British citizen, forty-six, slender build, five ten.”
He glanced at Daniella, praying that she couldn’t hear him.
Hammers were pounding in his head. First Daniella, now Jane.
The sky was slowly turning a cloudless blue.
Butthead called.
“Sorry, Alex—”
“Spit it out,” he barked, panicking.
“A Jane Doe answering that description was brought to the Charité Mitte in Wedding.”
“What’s her condition?”
“She’s not in the system yet. She was brought to the emergency room by ambulance and was taken straight into surgery.”
“No!”
“Dad?” Daniella asked quietly. “What’s the matter?”
“What?”
“You’re crying.”
FLIGHT TO BERLIN | 08:02
“Charité Mitte, guten Morgen,” a thick female voice recited.
“You admitted a surgical emergency this morning around six o’clock. A Jane Doe. Can you tell me her condition?”
The Gulfstream started its descent into Tegel.
“I’m sorry, sir. We don’t give out medical information over the telephone.”
“I’m on a plane on my way to Berlin, and I’m very concerned. Please, I just want to know her condition.”
“I’m sorry. It is forbidden. Are you a relative?”
“I’m her husband.”
“You should be here, sir.”
TEGEL AIRPORT | 09:54
Alex hugged Daniella tight, burying his face in her sweet-smelling hair. He shouldn’t be abandoning her now. He prayed that he’d chosen the best of the bad options he had.
“Go, Dad,” she said, giving him a kiss. “Be strong.”
Tense and agitated, he disembarked from the plane in the dry chill of Berlin. He gazed at her from the rear window. She waved at him from the door of the plane.
CHARITÉ MITTE, BERLIN | 10:16
Alex took the elevator to the Surgical Trauma and Intensive Care Unit on the seventh floor. The nurse at the desk had heavy thighs and no lips. Her mouth was no more than a thin line. Stonily, she made it clear that he would not be able to see the patient in the recovery room.
The hospital smells, the intense dry heat, and the presence of police detectives all urged Alex want to get out into the fresh air to cool off. He had to think carefully before he made a move.
He waited for the elevator, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. When it finally arrived, he got in last and took a position close to the door, facing front.
His phone beeped.
“Do you need me?” It was a text from Paris.
If he could get his hands on Paris, he’d squeeze the life out of him.
The elevator stopped on the second floor with a ding. All the passengers except one spilled out and headed off in different directions with worried faces. Alex stayed where he was. The doors closed.
He texted back: “Where are you?”
Within a second, his phone beeped again.
“Behind you.”
Paris was dressed in scrubs, his face hidden behind a surgical mask.
Alex grabbed Paris by the throat and started squeezing as hard as he could. Making no attempt to defend himself, Paris croaked, “It wasn’t me.”
The Frenchman’s face was turning red. He finally rammed his fingers between his throat and Alex’s hands, his small eyes bulging. Alex squeezed harder, but the man had the neck of a bull. He managed to break away, crashing into the corner of the elevator, where he gasped for breath. “I swear on my children’s lives, I didn’t do it!”
They settled themselves on a freezing wooden bench on snow-covered Robert-Koch-Platz. An ambulance drove by with flashing orange lights, its siren silent.
Alex gave Paris a piercing look. “What happened to her?”
“I was digging a deep grave. She got nervous. Maybe she thought I was making it big enough to hold her, too. I just wanted it deep. There are wild boars out there. She drew her gun on me. I let her feel my chip and she calmed down. I went back to the house and she stayed outside, alone. I heard a scream. I ran out. Someone was strangling her from behind with a thin steel cable. He was stocky and strong. I saw him. A bald guy.
“He was cutting into her neck. When he saw me he ran away. She was losing blood. I bandaged the wound and called an ambulance.”
“You said he was bald?”
“He’s scary. Sick.”
“Someone tried to kill me with a steel cable, too,” Alex said.
“This stinks,” Paris said. “Two attacks the same way at the same time.”
Alex took out his phone and flipped to the picture of the dead body of his attacker. He enlarged it and showed it to Paris. “This is the man who attacked me.”
Paris looked at the photo and laughed. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Why?”
“That’s the man who attacked Jane.”
CHARITÉ MITTE, BERLIN | 11:06
“She has been sedated since the operation,” the nurse whispered.
The harsh neon lights were reflected on the linoleum floor, which was bare save for a few widely spaced beds.
Jane twisted fitfully under the sheet. Alex reached out and touched her hand. “I’m here, honey.”
She tried to clear her throat and grimaced in pain, her eyelids drooping. She mouthed, “Water.”
“Later,” the doctor said firmly. “Not yet.” She headed for the door. Alex hurried to catch up with her.
“How is she?” he asked.
“She has deep cuts on her neck. She was lucky. Another quarter inch at most and the artery would have been severed, but as it is she should recover quickly. If there are no complications, we should be able to release her in two days.”
The doctor went away.
Alex called Butthead. “Look for identical twins, assassins for hire. And look for strangulation with a steel cable.”
“Have you heard from Exodus or the econ division?” Butthead asked.
“No.”
“I hope you’re lying down when she calls. I wouldn’t want you to fall over.”
GRUNEWALD, BERLIN | 16:08
In the early afternoon they slipped out of the hospital, leaving behind fake identities. Jane gripped the armrests of the wheelchair as tightly as she could.
When they reached Justus’s house, she collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep. Alex sprawled beside her and slept.
He awoke to the aroma of root vegetables stewing in the kitchen. A view of the forest filled the glass wall opposite the bed. Jane was sleeping on her side, breathing heavily.
The day was waning, growing colder and tinting the snow blue. At the edge of the forest, the bleak conifers were swaying in the wind. The last remnants of daylight gradually disappeared as darkness fell on the snow-covered lawn. The outside lights glowed, blazing orange.
Alex sat in the gloom, listening to Jane’s troubled breathing. Her face was bathed in a dim glow. It’s always odd to watch someone you love when they’re sleeping, stripped of all expression. He suddenly felt apprehensive, concerned about the effort it would take to make their relationship work.
His phone vibrated.
“We’re in,” Sammy Zengot informed him. “Like you thought, the system was in a cloud. We got it to work by keying in one of the codes you gave us with two plus signs in front. The guys say the owner of the phone has to have a chip with all the codes on it implanted somewhere in his body. The chip communicates with the BlackBerry by Bluetooth. Happy now?”
“Very. What came up on the screen?”
“On the screen? A list of major European cities. Why?”
“How many?”
“Give me a few seconds to count them.”
The seconds felt like minutes.
“Thirteen.”
Alex’s temples were pounding. “How many?”
“Thirteen. Why?”
“You sure, Sammy?”
“Sorry, make that fourteen.”
“How come?”
“Grunewald’s on the list, too.”
GRUNEWALD, BERLIN | 19:44
Mossad’s immune system was compromised. For the next few months at least, it would be impossible to operate in any city where a Nibelung had been killed. Someone had declared war on the Ring and had planned the attack meticulously.
Jane listened openmouthed as he told her what he’d learned.
“How many signal types does the chip have?” he asked.
“Five,” she whispered.
“Is there an emergency alert, one for imminent danger?”
“The fifth signal.”
He called Sammy.
“Find the menu for the signals in the phone and send out the fifth to all the numbers I gave you.”
“That’ll take a while.”
“What’s the last city on the list?”
“The last one?”
“Yes, Sammy, the last one.”
“Vienna.”
“When?”
“10:51 this morning.”
“I need the BlackBerry,” Alex said.
“On its way.”
He hung up.
Alex reported to Reuven the loss of fourteen Nibelungs, including Justus.
Reuven heaved a sigh. “It’s an operational disaster.”
This wasn’t a good time to be the chief. Very soon, Reuven would have to report to the prime minister. It could cost him his head. Alex was surprised to find that he felt sorry for the man.
“Alex,” Jane said.
“Did you get an alert?”
She nodded gingerly.
Finally, the dormant Nibelungs were being awakened. The vulnerable targets could become lethal weapons.
Alex went down to the kitchen. The stainless-steel counter was hidden under bulging shopping bags from Kaiser’s supermarket. Paris was using a wooden spoon to stir the contents of a blue cast-iron pot. He tasted what looked like orange soup and threw in a pinch of salt.
Baby carrots were cooking in an integrated steamer in the counter. The Frenchman ground cumin and cardamom with a mortar and pestle and added the aromatic mixture to the carrots. Three brushed-stainless-steel Iittala saucepans with their crisp Scandinavian design were arranged on the counter beside two copper pots.
Paris displayed a two-pound cut of marbled entrecôte to Alex. “Hungry?” he asked.
Alex nodded and looked through the red grocery bags. He found a round country loaf, salami, cheese, mustard, mayonnaise, onions, garlic and fresh thyme.
The Frenchman was unaware of the crisis.
“Even in bad times, you have to eat,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said.
“You’re not hungry?”
“Sorry I didn’t trust you. I apologize.”
“Sometimes I act strange,” Paris smiled. He cut the meat into two substantial steaks and studded them with sprigs of thyme.
“How did Justus communicate with the Nibelungs?” Alex asked.
The Frenchman arranged boiled potatoes in a deep pan, adding a generous splash of olive oil, coarse salt, ground black pepper and thyme leaves. He put the pan in the hot oven and then sat down.
At least he didn’t decide to organize the cupboards first, Alex thought.
“Never by phone,” Paris said. “Not cellular or landline. There can’t be a direct link between the Nibelungs. Not under any circumstances.”
“So how did you communicate?”
“Justus built nitro RC helicopters. He started a fictitious forum on the web, crazyheli.com, and installed a special search engine that got questions and answers off other forums. It would seem perfectly innocent to anyone who happened onto it. If I needed something from him, I left a coded message there. It sent an alert to Justus’s phone. He’d respond with a signal to the chip in my crotch. It vibrates.”
Things were beginning to make sense.
“Each Nibelung has their own username and password,” Paris went on. “If Justus wanted to set up a meeting, he’d send a signal to my chip. I’d go into the forum and find a coded message with the details.
“I just got an alert,” Paris said, getting up. He chopped a few cloves of garlic and rubbed them into the steaks. Then he opened the oven door, and the kitchen was filled with the aroma of roasting potatoes and thyme.
Why did Paris wait until now to tell him about the vibrations
in his crotch? He might have heard Alex give the order to send out an alert. The man could be setting a trap. Alex had to be sure of his identity. But there was no way to check him out, no one to ask.
GRUNEWALD, BERLIN | 20:38
Dinner was ready. The two men took their places at the bar. The roasted sprigs of thyme gave the steak an earthy aroma. The golden potatoes were roasted perfectly. They sat there chewing and eyeing each other. Alex filled their glasses with fine Tignanello he’d found in the wine cellar.
“No dessert,” the Frenchman apologized. They were silent, giving Alex time to think. Whoever was killing the Nibelungs was going from country to country, stalking his victim, taking them out, and then immediately moving on to the next target. Someone else had to be getting rid of the bodies. The legwork must also have been done before the assassin arrived. It demanded painstaking information-gathering over an extended period of time. An operation of that size could only be organized by the secret agency of a sovereign country with embassies and consulates throughout Europe. It would require dozens of field agents, sophisticated covert infrastructure, and secure communications.
Alex’s phone vibrated against the thin stem of the wineglass. Exodus was calling.
“We dug deep, Alex. According to our preliminary estimate, Justus Erlichmann was worth roughly three hundred million euros. He might also have had additional income from property in Berlin that we haven’t found yet. We’re looking under every rock. His name is never mentioned in the media. But that’s not why I’m calling.”
All that remained from the wine was a dry, salty taste.
“Alex, Justus Erlichmann has been contributing large sums of money to a neo-Nazi organization.”
GRUNEWALD, BERLIN | 20:56
Alex fled to the snowy lawn behind the house, the piercing cold striking at his burning face. Out of earshot of the Frenchman, he whispered into the phone, “Justus? Neo-Nazis? Are you positive?”
“We checked and rechecked,” Exodus said. “We broke down his annual outlays and crossed off the regular expenses. In the end we were left with a monthly bank transfer of thirty thousand euros. We couldn’t explain it, so we kept digging.”
Ring of Lies Page 13
