by Dan Ames
“So how’d he find it?”
“I thought it was better if I didn’t know.”
“You’re probably right.”
Tallon maneuvered his way through the airport and hopped onto the road heading south toward Munich. To the right of the entrance was a row of shops including, incongruously, a Victoria’s Secret.
“Think more people buy lingerie when they arrive or depart?” he asked.
“Arrive.”
Tallon considered asking her if she wanted to pop in and try on a few things but thought better of it. Instead, when they were still a good ways from the city center, Tallon pulled off the main road and drove to the east.
“Where exactly are we going?”
“A bar.”
“This is no time for happy hour, Tallon.”
“Trust me.”
Which, of course, she did. They passed a sprawling army base that seemed to go on for miles.
“Joint base,” Tallon explained. “Fair amount of American soldiers get stationed here usually for relatively short deployments.”
They drove past the base to a beer garden that Tallon apparently knew quite well. They went inside.
“Hopefully the same guy works here,” he said. When he asked a server for Wolfgang, he was met with a shake of a head.
Tallon explained what he was looking for and was referred to a bartender who’d been smoking a cigarette out back.
He waved Pauling and Tallon to a back corner of the bar where a door opened up into an office.
Using a mixture of broken English and German, Tallon said, “There was a guy who used to work here. He would buy certain items from soldiers leaving Germany to go back home. You used to be able to pick up a thing or two for cheap, without having to deal with paperwork.”
The man nodded, then made obvious glances at Tallon’s pockets and Pauling’s purse.
Pauling pulled out a wad of cash and put it on the desk.
The man stood, opened a cabinet and Tallon saw a wide range of handguns. He chose two Berettas, both 9mm, and extra ammunition. He examined the guns and saw they were well-oiled with actions that were smooth.
They got back into the car and less than a half hour later, they pulled up outside the address Pauling’s researcher said was the home of Zeta Corporation.
“Seriously? This is it?” Tallon asked. It was a strange-looking building. Contemporary, clearly, with sharp angles, and a minimalist exterior. Yet, it also seemed odd. Off-balance. As if it was either not finished or someone had borrowed surplus building materials and slapped the place together with whatever they could find. It was like a modern art piece that begged the question: is it supposed to look like this?
“Indeed it is,” Pauling said.
“What’s our plan?”
“Well, my guess is Charles Tse, Henry Torcher and the mysterious CEO of Zeta are all inside. I think we ought to introduce ourselves.”
They got out of the vehicle with Berettas held loosely by their sides, and walked toward the building.
Chapter 41
“You certainly went out with a bang, as the Yanks like to say,” Gunnella Bohm said.
She had her cane by her side. She was now joined in the room with the map monitor by Henry Torcher and Charles Tse.
Tse wore an emerald green suit and his glasses sported thick black frames. Torcher wore a black suit with a white shirt. His neck muscles were bulging and in his thick hand was a delicate glass of champagne.
“How are the rest of our colleagues doing?” Bohm asked.
“Mikael Gladhus is dead, of course,” Tse said. He put a briefcase on the table. “This is what he had with him when he died. Copies of our exchanges and the plan in general. He was going to the authorities. That was a close call.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that,” Bohm remarked impatiently.
“The other two members of our consortium are alive and well and watching safely from afar,” Torcher said. “One in his penthouse in Hong Kong. The other, on his cattle ranch in Argentina.”
“Perfect,” Bohm said. “What about the mess in Vegas?”
“Relatively under control,” Torcher said cautiously. “Just a couple of loose ends. We found the leak and neutralized him.”
“Good,” Bohm said. “But explain what you mean by ‘relatively.’”
Tse, standing by the side cabinet that held several magnums of champagne asked, “May I get you a drink?” he asked Bohm.
“Champagne,” she responded.
Tse poured two glasses of champagne. Kept one for himself and handed the other to Bohm. His eyes went to the screen, willing the green dots to turn to red.
Which is why he was completely unaware of Torcher behind him. He’d set down his glass of champagne and now his enormous hands went around the Asian’s throat and with a brutal twist, broke the man’s neck.
The well-dressed billionaire slid to the floor, his glass of champagne spilled onto his suit. His glasses had fallen off and Torcher stomped on them. “I’m so goddamned sick of those glasses. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he said.
“Well done,” Bohm said to Torcher. “It’s good to see you again, son.”
Torcher nodded. He hardly knew his mother but praise was almost never forthcoming.
He was about to respond when the map on the screen changed to a live video of the front entrance to the building.
They both watched as two people approached.
“Lauren Pauling,” Torcher said.
“And Michael Tallon,” Bohm responded. “This is what you meant by relatively?”
She turned and looked at her son.
“Please take care of them once and for all.”
Chapter 42
Tallon raised his pistol and shot out the camera over the front entrance to Zeta Corp. He turned and spotted two more cameras, one on each end of the building. He took careful aim and shot them as well.
They shattered and the pieces sprinkled to the ground.
He motioned Pauling to go to the left and he took the right.
Inside, he could hear footsteps but also knew whoever was guarding the place was not going to come out of the front door.
There had to be a side entrance.
Sure enough, a door cracked open on the other side of the wall. Tallon waited. It was only one set of footsteps but the man was moving quickly. Not with enough caution.
Tallon raised the 9mm to eye level. When the man peeked around the corner, Tallon shot him. He had ducked back quickly and the bullet tore off his nose. Tallon dove around the corner and the man fired, the bullets going high. He was screaming in pain.
Tallon fired his gun five times in quick succession and the man stopped screaming.
Tallon crawled further around the corner so he couldn’t be viewed from the front. He’d never seen the man before. Short, close-cropped black hair. Black pants and a heavy black sweatshirt with a vest. Security, for sure. Tallon wondered how big the security force was. There were no cars visible anywhere and no sign of life. If Zeta was in fact a fake company, how many people could they possibly have inside?
The rear of the building was the place to go.
They would try to flank them, for sure. Tallon raced forward, ducked around the back of the building and was surprised to see no one. He continued on, and turned the corner that should have brought him to Pauling.
But she wasn’t there.
He turned, and came face to-face with a giant hulk of a man with blond hair and blue eyes.
His face was bright red and he was smiling at Tallon. His gun was pointed at Tallon’s midsection and he started to say something.
Tallon didn’t hesitate.
He drove his forehead directly into the man’s face. Since the blond hulk was taller, Tallon’s forehead only succeeded in smashing the man’s mouth. Ordinarily, he could knock a man unconscious but the size difference had made it impossible. Still, Tallon both felt and heard all kinds of things breaking in the big man’s face
.
The man’s gun erupted and Tallon felt something wicked strike him in the left side. It was a brutal blow and he knew he’d been shot. The strength began to seep from his body and he barely managed to stay on his feet.
And then two things happened almost instantaneously; he heard a single gunshot and his face was instantly covered with blood. His eyes were full of red and he couldn’t see. The giant fell on top of him and Tallon crawled out from underneath the enormous body. He wiped his eyes with his bare hands.
He looked up and saw Pauling standing, her Beretta still pointed at the blond who was missing half of his head.
“Thanks,” he said to her.
“You’re shot, aren’t you?”
“Afraid so,” Tallon said. “Let’s go”
Chapter 43
They entered the building through the side entrance and were shocked by what they saw. It was completely empty, save for a lone elevator shaft in the middle of the space. It was all concrete, steel beams and exposed wiring.
No stairs at all.
No other signs of security.
“I don’t like this,” Pauling said, looking at the elevator. She was almost in disbelief. Zeta Corporation was a complete scam. The place was practically empty.
“Yeah, that’s bad,” Tallon said. He was wobbly and knew that climbing into an elevator and then having the doors open was the worst kind of exposure possible.
“There has to be stairs somewhere.”
They went back to the front entrance.
“There,” Pauling said. She’d spotted a concealed rectangle of space above which a crude fire escape ladder had been installed. Pauling ran to it, pulled the ladder down and they climbed. Pauling went up quickly. Tallon labored up, one step at a time.
At the top, an empty corridor led to a wall of glass.
They walked quickly, before noticing the two rooms at the other end of the hall.
Pauling stepped into the first, gun drawn and at the ready.
Tallon stepped into the second. It held a table, large flat-screen television and a shelf with buckets of champagne. Charles Tse was dead on the floor.
Tallon ignored the body and went out to the main space. He saw a woman with a cane and a small Asian woman running for the ladder.
Tallon fired but he knew his aim was off. The gun wasn’t steady in his hands. Even so, the big woman stumbled, dropping a briefcase and laptop in the process. She pulled the Asian woman closer to her and used her as a shield.
His side soaked with blood and his balance questionable, he staggered forward and retrieved the briefcase as he heard Pauling run up behind him. He fell to the floor, sat up and opened the briefcase.
Pauling joined him and he held out the paper.
“What is this?” he asked. His face was ghostly white and blood covered his pants.
Pauling scanned the papers. “Jesus Christ. Charles Tse wasn’t going to close the income gap,” she said. “He was going to blow it wide open.”
She showed the papers to Tallon.
“These are targets. People who wanted to tax the rich and redistribute wealth. They were going to assassinate all of them and make even more money.”
“We have to stop them,” Tallon said. “But how?”
Pauling spread the papers out and took photos of them with her phone.
“We won’t,” she said as she began firing off messages. “But the FBI and Interpol will.”
Chapter 44
48 HOURS LATER
Tallon’s hospital room was clean and the other bed was empty. He was recovering from surgery to remove fragments of a bullet lodged against his femur and hip.
More importantly, Pauling was sitting on the edge of the bed and they were both watching the television.
“A conspiracy to target various members of the global economy were thwarted today,” the announcer said. “Authorities in America killed a man who planned to shoot the chairwoman of the Ways and Means Committee. In Paris, a member of Parliament was almost murdered by a woman with a knife. She was killed by police.”
The reporter continued as a graphic showed a map with designated locations around the globe. “In other parts of Europe and all around the world, authorities were alerted to potential attacks. They were all stopped in time save for one, a car bomb in Paris that took the life of a prominent blogger who argued for vigorous measure to redistribute wealth in the world.”
Pauling shook her head. “Greed. One of the worst cases I’ve ever seen.”
The announcer continued. “The investigation is just beginning with reports of crimes committed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Paris, London and Munich.”
A nurse came in and checked on Tallon. Pauling shut off the television and remained silent until she left.
“The big woman with the cane,” Pauling began. “The CEO of Zeta. You’re telling me she had been the head of this group called The Zurich Collective?”
Tallon nodded. “Do you remember that case we worked where I introduced you to a guy who’d worked with me on some contracts? We talked about a loose collection of independent contracts that had been dubbed the Department of Murder? A group loosely affiliated with the Zurich Collective?”
“Yes,” Pauling said.
“Well Gunnella Bohm was the head of the Zurich Collective for a long time. Ruthless. Someone murdered her, or so they thought. Rumor was the killer was an Italian businessman by the name of Marcus Benedetto. No one could prove it, though.”
Pauling connected the dots.
“So let me guess, she came back and started a rival organization she called Zeta. I suppose she thought this insane plan with Charles Tse was going to put her back on top. Maybe her plan was to put her old company out of business. And get filthy rich in the process.”
Tallon nodded.
“Yeah, that didn’t work out so well for her, did it?”
Chapter 45
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND
The man who replaced Gunnella Bohm as head of the Zurich Collective still held the position.
His name was Dieter Mueller.
He was now standing in the office space reserved by the firm. They did not meet often as a group. Normally, those sessions were held at most twice a year. Sometimes, when everyone’s business was thriving, only once a year.
As part of his compensation for assuming the mantle of one of the most powerful and secretive organizations in the world, Mueller had the use of the private apartment on the same floor as the offices.
It had once belonged to Gunnella Bohm. Once he’d taken over, Mueller had stripped the apartment down to its bones, hoping to rid the place of any remnants of Bohm.
It clearly hadn’t worked.
Like Lauren Pauling and Michael Tallon, whose names he had been forced to become familiar with, he too had been watching the news. Thanks to their pipeline into Interpol and other law enforcement agencies, the firm had been able to see firsthand the evidence procured by investigators.
Not only were they monitoring the outcome and ramifications of the Silicon 5 as the media had dubbed them, but the Collective’s interest was mainly with the only one of the group to have escaped.
A mysterious woman said to be in charge of a large firm known as Zeta Corporation.
Mueller now knew the truth. Zeta Corporation was a scam. A last-ditch effort by Gunnella Bohm - who most had believed was dead. Who no doubt at this point was certifiably insane.
Dieter weighed his options.
Finally, he deployed an order.
It was to the internal network of trained assassins known by its nickname: the Department of Murder.
He offered the largest single contract ever put into play by the Collective.
To realize the enormous payday, only one thing was required by Dieter Mueller.
Bring him the head of Gunnella Bohm.
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