by Trevor Scott
Jake needed to leave undetected. He had parked with the nose of his car just in front of a road that ended on his. Starting the car, he made a quick right turn onto the side street. The Passat slowly gained speed. Looking into his rear view mirror, Jake was convinced that Kline had not seen him.
11
PISA, ITALY
Toni and Kurt drove swiftly along Via Bonanno Pisano catching a glimpse of the white marble leaning tower from time to time between buildings.
“I told you I’d show you Pisa on a Saturday night, kid,” Toni quipped.
“Try Sunday morning.”
“Close enough.”
She turned left on Via Volturno and crossed the Arno River. Kurt tried to keep up with the street names, but after crossing the river and turning left to parallel it, he lost track of where he was. The streets were poorly marked in this squalid part of town.
“Where in the hell are we?” Kurt asked.
“The Pisa most tourists don’t see. Consider yourself lucky,” she said with a smile.
Lucky or not, he knew they had a long evening ahead of them. One that would bring him to the very brink of his training.
The Alfa Romeo finally turned down a narrow alley that was both dirty and wretched. After a few blocks, when at times it appeared that the narrowness would rip the outside mirrors from the car, Toni pulled as close to one side as she could and stopped. They both got out on the driver’s side. Toni pulled a key from her purse and opened a large metal door. Then she opened the trunk, Kurt and she quickly pulled Lt. Budd from within, and quietly closed the trunk again. Kurt put him over his shoulder and carried him inside.
After the door closed, Toni turned on a small overhead light that partially lit the sordid nature of the tiny corridor. Chunks of wood and metal lay strewn across the cement floor, and the smell of urine and rat feces permeated throughout.
“Nice place, hey, kid? It reminds me of home in New York,” Toni said with a piercing echo.
“Is it okay to talk here?”
“Yeah, no problem,” she said, fumbling through her keys. “The Italians let us use this place. Most of the people have moved out of this neighborhood. Some developer wants to convert these buildings into trendy apartments overlooking the river. But we’ve still got a few more years to work out of here. The funding has been slow, and the bureaucracy even more so.”
Toni opened the door at the end of the corridor. The room inside was a stark contrast to the alley and outer corridor. The furniture was old and worn, but it looked clean. The kitchen area had a metal table and chair set that could have been from the ‘50s, but it too was at least clean.
“Put him in the far back room and lock the door,” Toni ordered.
Kurt carried him back, turned on the light and plopped the lieutenant onto a small cot.
The room that Lt. Budd would now call home was designed to look like a prison cell. It had one small cot, a disgusting sink and toilet, and a cement wall. The wall was notched in groups of five marking off over sixty days for one visitor. A lie, of course. The first few notches were deep and defined, but toward the end they were barely visible. The overhead light was actuated by a rheostat so its intensity could be overwhelming or virtually nonexistent. The door had a peep hole to look in, and it opened from the left side instead of the right. Kurt saw why when he noticed the walls in the hall were painted darker at the end than at the front, and a black curtain hung about midway down the hall to keep the kitchen and living room lights from interfering with the intended effects.
When Kurt returned, Toni had two cold beers opened.
“Thanks. I could use one,” he said. “That’s an interesting room you have there.”
“Psychology is the most important aspect of a proper interrogation,” Toni informed him.
“Is it totally sound proof?”
“Yes. He can yell all he wants, and we couldn’t hear him out here. That goes both ways. We can talk freely.”
Kurt had heard of such rooms in his training, but the Naval Criminal Investigative Service operated under more controlled conditions. All of their interrogation rooms were on Naval bases or air stations. He had never seen a shipboard facility since he was recruited to the NCIS.
Toni quickly downed her beer. “Let’s go, kid.”
She had explained to him the tactics she wanted to use on Lt. Budd. At first it was hard for him to accept the use of drugs and electrical shock on a fellow officer. But the thought of selling out American technology sickened him even more.
Hours passed. The interrogations became more intense. Kurt’s job was to monitor the whole charade from a small control room on closed circuit television. From time to time he would ask questions or make comments over a loud speaker through a muffled microphone that altered his voice. Most comments were in Italian, to make it appear that he was in charge and running the show. He could bring pain with a simple word bugiardo, or liar. The small electrical shocks were intensified in Lt. Budd’s mind by a drug Toni had given him. He was in a lot less pain than he thought. She spoke to Lt. Budd in mostly Italian to confuse him, and then in broken English when she really wanted to know something.
The information came slowly. But Leo Birdsong had been right all along. Lt. Budd, the Bingo King, was squeamish at the least. The drugs didn’t help his cause. Toni would administer one drug to knock him out long enough for her to change clothes. Then she gave him another drug to awaken him to make it appear as though another day had passed. All along he was on sodium pentothal to allow the words to flow more freely.
After nearly fifteen hours, Toni and Kurt had enough information on tape to keep their investigation going for weeks. Lt. Budd implicated Petty Officer First Class Shelby Taylor and two other men aboard the USS Roosevelt. The number Toni got from him earlier was to a place of business in Rome. An American is all he knew. In the end, Toni placed Lt. Budd into a deep narcosis.
Toni and Kurt had nearly dropped from exhaustion. They slept until evening, so they could return Lt. Budd to his room under the shroud of darkness.
Kurt woke to the sound of his watch alarm. Toni was sleeping on the sofa. He sat and watched her for a while. Her performance had been nothing less than spectacular. She earned an Academy Award as far as he was concerned. Her skin looked so soft; her high cheek bones and strong jaw were more beautiful than he had ever seen. Finally, he shook her to wake her up.
“Toni? We’ve got work to do.”
“Jake, leave me alone,” she said softly.
Jake? Who the hell is Jake?
Kurt shook her again. This time more violently.
“Toni. Get up,” he said more loudly.
Finally her big brown eyes opened and looked directly at Kurt.
“Kurt?”
“Yeah, Kurt, not Jake,” he said, disturbed. “Who the hell is Jake anyway?” He sounded more like a jealous boy friend than he wanted to or had the right to. “Never mind.”
“No, it’s okay. Jake Adams is a guy I know, or used to know. I haven’t seen or heard from him in over a year and a half. We were close.”
“Did you work together?”
“Not really.” She paused for a second, smiled. “He worked as an Air Force intelligence officer at the Rome Embassy before he was reassigned to Germany. He also worked for the Company after he resigned his commission. He came to Italy a lot. His specialty is computers. We had a...relationship. He left the CIA and Europe over a year ago.”
Kurt went to the refrigerator and got a cold beer.
“You remind me of him a little.”
“How’s that?” he said and then took a big gulp of beer.
“Well, I don’t know. You look a little like him. Could we change the subject, kid?” Toni pleaded. “I’ve got a headache. I think it’s from all the yelling I did in Italian. I think we got everything we need from him.”
There was a pause.
“You were a pro in there,” Kurt complimented. “I learned a lot, and I really appreciate that.”
“Thanks. You weren’t half-bad yourself.”
They both seemed a bit uncomfortable.
“Let’s go, kid,” Toni finally said. “We’ve gotta get this Bozo back to the post before someone misses him.”
Kurt went to the interrogation room, lifted Lt. Budd over his shoulder once again, and carried him to the car. It reminded him of numerous times in high school when he had to carry his friend home after a night of drinking. After setting him in the trunk, Kurt and Toni drove back to the post to return him to his room. In the morning he’d feel like a truck ran him over, but his memory would be nonexistent.
12
BAD HONNEF, GERMANY
Jake found a room in a small town on the outskirts of Bonn. He brought only a small bag with a change of clothes and a suitcase with his equipment into his room. The suitcase resembled a metal camera case that he carried on the plane with him. It contained a laptop computer and various other small electronic devices. The small tracking transmitter was still under the front seat of the Passat, so there was an open spot in the rubber.
It was nearly an hour past the time he was to call Milt Swenson. Jake punched in Milt’s private number.
After a pause and a few rings. “Hello,” said a voice from Portland.
“Jake Adams.” After he said his name he put his hand over the mouthpiece quickly and looked toward the door. He thought he heard a noise outside his room.
“Is everything all right?” Milt asked.
“Yeah,” he said calmly. “I just thought I heard someone in the corridor. I’ve got some news. Bundenbach Electronics. Do you know anything about that company?”
There was a pause. “Yeah, I’ve heard of them,” Milt said derisively. “But they’re no IBM. Why do you ask?”
“They hired Gunter Schecht, a former German Intelligence agent, to follow me.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know, but I need some information,” Jake said. “Could you run a background on Bundenbach and e-mail it to me?” Jake asked.
“No problem,” Milt said. “I should be able to get that in about an hour. Anything else?”
“No. If I need you, I’ll call you there or at your private home phone. I won’t be available much.”
“Jake, what does this company have to do with Charlie Johnson missing?” Milt asked.
Jake thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. But I’ll find out.”
“Thanks, Jake.”
Jake plopped the phone back in its crevice.
The information from Milt would be helpful, but Jake also knew he needed a German perspective on Bundenbach Electronics. When he worked in Germany, he had access to numbers to various foreign government agencies and some private companies and banks. Most of the intelligence agencies and police, like the German Polizei, changed their access codes every three months. So he wasn’t sure how many would work. Jake quickly linked his laptop computer to his phone line. This small hotel didn’t have wireless internet access. The password numbers he needed were hidden on his hard drive in different places.
Within a few minutes, Jake had accessed the German equivalent of the U.S. Commerce Department. He downloaded about ten pages of information on Bundenbach to his hard drive. That would take him a while to translate into English. He wasn’t really sure what to look for. He hoped that whatever it was would jump out from the page.
After about a half hour of meticulously translating boring statistics on Bundenbach Electronics, Jake switched off the LCD screen, turned off the light in his room and went to sleep.
●
It had been one of the hottest days in San Remo history. The Italian Riviera was speckled with sun worshippers hiding under their colorful umbrellas. The afternoon sun had skirted its way around the balcony of Jake’s hotel room overlooking the aquamarine Mediterranean. He stood against the twisted metal railing with only his tight white tennis shorts and his black sunglasses hiding his nakedness. The intense sun over the past week had tanned his body to a golden brown.
Jake glanced back into the room. A soft breeze fluttered the sheers next to the open sliding glass door. Toni lay asleep on the bed following long, passionate lovemaking. Sex had become a staple of life like a good wine and pasta or the smell of the wondrous San Remo flower gardens.
Other women on the beach below couldn’t compare to Toni’s natural beauty, Jake thought. Her perfectly rounded breasts, firm butt and long, tight legs would excite any man. Her curly, black silky hair flowed delightfully over her broad shoulders. She could have easily had a successful modeling career, but instead, the adventure of the CIA and Europe beckoned her. Jake was thankful. He smiled at her beautifully naked form.
Jake moved inside and slipped off his shorts. As he flipped off his sun glasses and threw them to a chair, he rolled onto the crumpled sheets of the large bed, slid his hand across Toni’s smooth shoulder, and kissed her on the nape of the neck. She scrunched her neck and sighed.
“Um...again?”
He slid his hand down to her smooth, firm butt and then between her legs to her wetness.
“Yes.”
They had only two days left. They had to make the most of them.
●
Jake woke in darkness and disoriented in his new room. Sweat beads on his forehead chilled him—reminding him that he was in Germany and not basking in the Italian sun with Toni Contardo. Was she still working in Italy? If she had her way, that’s where she’d be.
Jake switched on a small desk lamp. He looked at the phone on the desk. He still had Toni’s number. Did she still live in that second floor apartment in Rome? Maybe he’d call her later.
He turned on his computer screen and noticed he had received an e-mail. Sleep would be more difficult now, thinking of Toni. He’d have to read the information Milt had sent.
He opened the e-mail and the attached pdf. The first page was a basic prospectus of Bundenbach Electronics. What they produced. Profit and loss statements. There were no losses. In fact, if Jake was a betting man, which he was on occasion, he could invest in this company on the strength of this information and that from the German commerce department that had been translated so far. The company seemed too good to be true. Too squeaky clean to hire a guy like Gunter Schecht. Another page caught Jake’s eye; a list of subsidiaries, production facilities, and clients.
Bundenbach had a number of German government contracts; mostly for the Leopard 3 Panzer, the main German battle tank, and helicopters. No fixed-wing aircraft contracts. The majority of its business was commercial, though.
Jake had a number of subsidiaries to check into. He had a feeling that most of Sunday would be spent in front of a computer screen. Maybe it would rain.
●
The room was completely dark until Jake pulled the thick nylon cord to the right of the window allowing the early morning sun to seep through the Rolladens and then totally engulf the tiny room. He felt the radiator below the window for a sign of warmth, but found none. He had forgotten to open the valve before he went to sleep. He needed food, but that could wait. Bells from a nearby Catholic church rang, and he counted them out to himself nine times.
His computer had become nearly as important as a seeing-eye dog to a blind man. His one-man investigation could accomplish nearly as much as an entire group of agents in the past. But the camaraderie was sorely missed. Jake logged on to the small laptop computer and began accessing the information he had received the night before from the German Commerce Department. He tried to read about the subsidiaries of Bundenbach Electronics, the seemingly endless figures, but his mind kept drifting off to Toni Contardo and Italy. Things with pleasure.
The cursor on the computer screen blinked quickly on and off prompting Jake for more data. Back to Bundenbach.
Jake sifted through all the information on Bundenbach Electronics. He was looking for a common link or reason why this German company needed this particular information and technology. There had to be a reason. Sure the tec
hnology was important in itself, but was it so important to fill Jake’s rental car full of holes? And why hire a guy like Gunter Schecht? The whole case was becoming an enigma. The CIA had trained him to piece together bits of information and draw conclusions to come up with a reasonable analysis of a situation. His specialty was human intelligence. One on one, he was among the best. But this case was puzzling. There could be a number of reasons why Bundenbach wanted the Teredata technology, but Jake was beginning to feel that economics was the most important factor. A national security issue would be attracting his old employer and German Intelligence.
Throughout the documents a few facts were disturbing. Bundenbach’s research and development costs had decreased steadily over the past two years, and projections indicated that they would diminish even further. This could only mean one of two things. Either Bundenbach was getting ready to go through a stabilization phase to rest on its laurels, or they had fired a number of good researchers in favor of industrial espionage agents like Gunter Schecht. Had it become more cost effective to steal than develop?
That might be a good move for the short term, but a corporate death sentence for the long term. Without its own independent researchers, Bundenbach would simply become a clone company. Maybe that’s all they wanted to be? No. Jake didn’t believe that for a moment. Bundenbach had been far too shrewd in the past to allow that. Stealing technology was more of a Russian or Western technique. Could Bundenbach be transferring the technology on to the Russians? That made no sense.
The church bells rang twelve times. Jake went to the window and looked to the street below. Well-dressed Germans walked arm in arm toward the large Gothic Cathedral on the corner across the Goethestrasse at the base of his Gasthaus. The Germans didn’t seem to care that they were late, he thought. The Priest could become impatient, but God would surely wait.
