by Roy Chaney
A truck driver delivering produce to Morlaix came across the Mercedes on the side of the dark country road. He stopped and ran to the motionless body lying behind the car. Vogel was dead. The bullet fired into the back of Vogel’s head as he lay on the ground had taken off much of Vogel’s forehead.
The truck driver was scrambling back into the cab of his truck when he heard several gunshots off in the trees beside the road. He removed a small pistol that he carried with him from under the seat of his truck, then radioed to his dispatcher in Caen. While the company dispatcher called the gendarmerie in Morlaix, the truck driver drove forty yards down the road, then turned around and sat there, headlights on and engine idling, the pistol in his sweat-covered hands, the Mercedes just barely visible in the fog down the road.
Twenty minutes later the gendarmes from Morlaix arrived. First one car, then two more, then another four or five. The gendarmes mounted an extensive search, bullhorns and portable crime scene lights crisscrossing in the night and fog. They found Hagen lying unconscious against a tree, his pistol on the ground next to him. The ambulance arrived—
Hagen woke up, his mind hazy from drugs. Thick white bandages on his arm and shoulder and around his chest. A nurse. A doctor. Gendarmes. Then the wheelchair and the move down the hallway to the small empty white room, with a gendarme in the hallway outside the door, standing guard.
Hagen waited. The pain in his arm and shoulder grew as the drugs wore off. The captain of the gendarmes arrived, strutting like a rooster. Questions, one after another. But Hagen said little. Call the Directorate of Territorial Security, Hagen said. I want to speak with someone from the DST. The captain balked. DST indeed. You’ll speak to me or no one. But the captain gave in finally and made the call. An hour later a small man with wire-framed glasses stepped into the white room, showed Hagen his credentials.
Monsieur Girard of the DST . . .
Several days later Hagen sat in William Severance’s office in Berlin. The gray sky outside the window matched the ashen color of Severance’s face. Severance had one question—what the hell happened out there? The DST wants an explanation, Bodo. Langley wants you to disappear. The BND lost a man and wants your ass.
Hagen couldn’t explain. Ingeborge Stromm must have told someone about Hagen and Vogel and their visit to her home and that person had taken matters into their own hands. There was no other answer. But who had Stromm contacted? Totenkopf? Hohle? Or had Hagen and Vogel inadvertently kicked some other hornet’s nest?
A copy of a report from the DST, routed through the French foreign ministry, lay on Severance’s desk. The report had gone to the German foreign ministry and the U.S. Department of State. The DST had looked into the Stromm story. The same night that Hagen and Vogel were ambushed on the road to Morlaix, Ingeborge Stromm was found dead in a hotel room in Saint-Malo, two hundred kilometers from her home near Morlaix. The report said that she’d placed the barrel of a revolver in her mouth and pulled the trigger, but Hagen didn’t believe it. Stromm had told someone about Hagen and Vogel. That person had decided that it was time to get rid of her as well as them. Whatever Ingeborge Stromm knew about Heinrich Kress’s association with the East German Stasi, she took it with her to the grave.
The report went on at length about the Stromm story, picking it apart, casting suspicion on Hagen and Vogel. The message was clear—the DST believed that the Stromm story was at least partly a fabrication to cover up some other BND or CIA operation on French soil. The French foreign ministry demanded an official explanation.
I can’t help you, Bodo, Severance said. They want your head on a platter and mine too.
Two pasty-faced men from Langley arrived in Berlin and questioned Hagen at great length about the Brittany operation and the death of BND agent Johannes Vogel. Then the BND men took over. When the questions ended Hagen knew where he stood—or, as the case was, where he didn’t stand. Hagen was going to take the fall. Langley needed a scapegoat to placate the French and Hagen was their man. Hagen’s days with the CIA were numbered in single digits.
Hagen beat them to the punch and submitted his resignation.
Stasi agents Totenkopf and Hohle—just two code names on an old Stasi document. But they had won. Hagen had lost.
And Johannes Vogel was dead.
Hagen sat alone in his Berlin apartment. He didn’t know what to do with himself, so he did nothing. At odd moments—walking along the street at dusk, staring out the window, sitting in a gasthaus with another drink in his hands—the image of Vogel lying in the road, bleeding, dying, washed over him and he felt the fear all over again. He should have stayed at the car with Vogel. He could’ve saved him. He shouldn’t have run. He was Vogel’s only chance but he’d left Vogel there to die. Hagen lived through those few minutes again and again and each time he left Vogel behind to die. A thousand times.
Then the dreams began. Hagen wandering in the dark forest. Vogel calling out to him—
“Bodo . . .”
Six months later—a phone call from the States. The Sniff on the other end—“Bodo, Ronnie is dead.” Now the voice Hagen heard in his dreams was Ronnie’s voice.
“Bodo . . .”
It was too late to save Vogel. It was too late to save Ronnie. But there was one thing Hagen could do. He’d find Ronnie’s killer. He’d find Ronnie’s killer if it cost Hagen his own life.
He wouldn’t run this time . . .
A sign along the edge of the highway indicated that they were passing through the town of Searchlight. It wasn’t much of a town—a few road house casinos, a cluster of mobile homes and an abandoned gas station with the name jack’s trading post painted on the side. Hagen checked his watch. How far had they driven? Fifty miles?
Another fifty to go then.
They’d be in Laughlin by midnight.
The headlights of oncoming cars wavered in the distance, then suddenly sped past. Behind them, following Harry Needles and Hagen along the desert highway, were more headlights, keeping their distance, as though giving Harry Needles and Hagen room to run.
“You believe me, don’t you, Bodo?” Harry Needles said all of a sudden. Harry spoke without moving his mouth too much. The words came out thick and awkward.
Hagen looked over at Harry. Harry’s mouth had stopped bleeding quite some time ago. The bloody hand towel now lay on the console between the front seats. Harry held the steering wheel in both hands, his chin down, his eyes staring straight ahead. In the lights from the dashboard Harry’s face took on a greenish hue.
“About what?”
“About Ronnie. I don’t know who killed him. I don’t know anything about it.”
“You could’ve told me about the hand yesterday, Harry, but you didn’t. When you heard I was downstairs waiting to see you, you called Gubbs and told him to drop by and tell me about Winnie the Poof. You wanted to keep me busy while you and Gubbs sold the hand. So why should I believe you now?”
“I got scared. I didn’t think you’d understand. I thought if I told you about the hand, you’d add it up all wrong. You’d think I had something to do with Ronnie’s death. Sometimes people get scared. Haven’t you ever been scared, Bodo?”
“Sure, I’ve been scared.”
“I got scared.”
“You still scared, Harry?”
“Yes, I am.”
“That’s good. You should be scared, for a lot of reasons. One reason is, McGrath thinks you killed Jimmy Ray. Or at least that you had something to do with it.”
Harry Needles glanced at Hagen, as though uncertain whether Hagen was serious. Then his eyes returned to the road ahead. “McGrath is out of his mind.”
“He says you were there in the office that night. You knew about the cash Jimmy Ray took with him to his house. McGrath thinks you told someone about it. And whoever you told went to the house and whacked Jimmy Ray and took the money. Of course, you might have killed him yourself but I don’t believe that. You don’t have the guts for that, do you, Harry?”
“Maybe.”
“No, not maybe. Absolutely.”
“So who killed him?”
“Who cares?”
“McGrath, for one. Marty Ray, for another.”
“Jimmy Ray’s been dead for five years. And he’s a lot easier to deal with dead than he was alive. I don’t give a fuck who killed him. It’s ancient history.”
“Maybe it’s not so ancient. But let’s change the subject. Tell me about Theresa Sanchez.”
“Why?”
“She was a friend of Gubbs’s. Maybe a close friend. And she saw Ronnie a couple of days before he was killed. Maybe she knows something. Maybe she’s scared to talk about what she knows. Like you are, Harry.”
“I wouldn’t call her a friend of Gubbs.”
“What would you call her?”
Harry Needles started to speak but the pain in his mouth cut the words off. He grimaced, then started again. “Back when Marty owned a piece of the Venus, he used to send Gubbs around to take a look at the girls. If Gubbs saw one that he thought Marty would like, he’d send her over to see Marty. If Marty liked the girl and wanted to see her again, he’d get in touch with her through Gubbs and Gubbs would set it up.”
“And the girls made a little money for being nice to Marty.”
“I didn’t follow it that closely.”
“Doesn’t sound like you needed to. Seems clear enough. Let me see if I’ve got this straight—Jack Gubbs was pimping your dancers to Marty Ray. Does that capture the essence of it?”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.”
“And Theresa Sanchez was one of those girls. Does she still see Marty?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s quite a business you run, Harry.”
“Theresa is a smart woman. I can depend on her. Which is more than I can say for a lot of people. What she does or who she sees in her personal life is her own business.”
“How did she wind up with Ronnie?”
“She told you.”
“She told me one story. I’m wondering if there’s another.”
“Ask her again.”
Hagen didn’t think he needed to. He could see it already. Ronnie, just out of the Legion and back in Las Vegas, looking for a party. Gubbs, with a black address book full of telephone numbers. A few phone calls. A little sweet-talk about money. And suddenly Ronnie has a hot date for the night. Maybe it happened that way. Maybe it happened the way Theresa Sanchez had said. But Hagen wondered what Ronnie might have told Theresa Sanchez. And what Theresa Sanchez might have told Jack Gubbs or Marty Ray. Once again Hagen saw how small Ronnie’s circle of friends—or enemies—was. Everyone knew everyone else, every one talked to each other. But there was a wild card now. A band of Legionnaires that had come to Las Vegas for their own reasons. Or had one of Ronnie’s acquaintances been talking to them too?
Ten miles past the desert town of Cal-Nev-Ari Harry Needles turned off 95 and onto Highway 163, heading due east toward Lake Mohave and Davis Dam. The highway wound through dark hills, then descended toward the Colorado River and the cluster of bright lights that was Laughlin. When they reached town Harry Needles drove along the main drag, Casino Drive, where a long line of tall hotel casinos glowed brightly along the west bank of the river. Hagen was surprised. The last time he’d been to Laughlin it was nothing more than a stain on the roadway. Now Laughlin looked like Las Vegas in miniature. Another town on the edge of nowhere, grown tall and fat on the money of people who carried their dreams in their wallets.
14.
IT WAS A SMALL BUNDLE. Just an old blue sweatshirt, rolled up and tied off with fraying brown twine.
It didn’t weigh much. Didn’t look like much.
Hagen stood at the table in the kitchen of Harry Needles’s house, working at the knot in the twine. Harry Needles sat on the other side of the wooden table, a glass of scotch in one hand, a handful of ice wrapped in a dish towel in the other. He alternated between sips of the scotch and pressing the ice against his mouth to help take the swelling down. The scotch didn’t go down easy—eighty proof liquor doesn’t mix well with torn gums and broken teeth.
Hagen kept the Englishman’s pistol on the table next to him but he wasn’t worried about Harry Needles.
Harry Needles only wanted out.
The house was part of a development at the south end of Laughlin—a ranch-style structure with white stucco walls and a red tile roof, built on a couple of acres of dry desert land at the end of a secluded cul-de-sac. Floodlights shone across the front of the house and the three-car garage that stood at the end of a driveway lined with palm trees, cacti and ornamental rocks. When they arrived at the house Hagen followed Harry Needles down a hallway and into a large den. From a wall safe behind a bookcase Harry Needles removed the blue sweatshirt bundle. From a closet on the other side of the room he pulled out a large tan suitcase and a leather valise. Green airport tags were tied to the handles of both bags.
Harry Needles and Hagen carried the two pieces of luggage and the bundle into the kitchen where the light was better and where Harry Needles could pour them both a drink.
Hagen untied the twine and pulled it away from the bundle.
“What is it?” Harry said.
“You haven’t looked at it?”
“I looked at it. It’s a wooden hand. Why is it important?”
Hagen took a long drink. He set his glass down and began unrolling the sweatshirt. “It’s important because a lot of men have died for it. Thousands of men, from around the world. Do you believe that, Harry?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
The sweatshirt fell away to reveal the wooden hand.
The hand was nine or ten inches long from fingertips to the end of the black wrist piece. The dark wood was covered with gouges and scratches. The articulated fingers were slightly curled, as though the hand had been taken from its owner just as it was reaching out to grasp something.
Hagen studied the hand under the light, turning it one way and then another. Wooden fingers moved on ancient wooden joints. The middle finger was broken off at the second joint—the hand had been kicked around a bit. The band of black metal around the wrist had once held in place some type of leather sheath that must have fitted over the stump of the forearm—a few small pieces of leather were still visible along the underside of the wristband where it was fastened to the wood. The edges of the leather looked rough and freshly cut, as though the sheath had been removed from the prosthetic hand only recently.
The hand looked even less remarkable now than it had in the photographs.
But it was unmistakably the same wooden hand.
The dead man’s hand.
Thirteen million dollars, the Sniff had said.
Hagen set the hand down, took another drink from his glass. He unzipped the battered valise that sat on the table, poked around among Ronnie’s belongings. The bag contained clothes, a few paperback books—one in English and two in French, an old pair of leather sandals stained with sweat, several loose centime coins, an envelope with a single color photograph—Ronnie in his Legionnaire’s dusty green fatigues, compact FAMAS assault rifle hanging across his chest from a strap around his neck, standing on top of a French-made armored personnel carrier painted in a brown-and-tan camouflage pattern. Ronnie looked cocky, large sunglasses hiding his eyes, sarcastic grin on his face, giving a thumbs-up sign. A long white beach in the background, a palm tree off to the left. Must’ve been when Ronnie was stationed in the Comoro Islands. Off the coast of Africa.
Hagen slid the photograph back into the envelope.
Toward the bottom of the valise Hagen found a green beret. A well-ironed black tassel hung from the back. The beret was battered, with several holes in the green cloth where it met the thin black leather sweatband. A round gold insignia was pinned to the side—a grenade with seven flames rising from it, the first and the seventh curled downward, the other f
ive flames standing straight.
The insignia of the French Foreign Legion.
Hagen dropped the beret back into the valise. He picked up the wooden hand and wrapped it back up in the blue sweatshirt.
“What are you going to do with it?” Harry Needles said.
“I’m going to give it to the people who want it,” Hagen said. “Before they kill me and take it anyway. But first they’re going to tell me a few things.”
Hagen tied off the bundle with the twine, then tucked the bundle into the valise, zipped the bag closed.
Hagen didn’t know where to find the Legionnaires but he didn’t think it mattered. All he had to do was return to Las Vegas and stand still for ten minutes. They’d swarm all over him. But the wooden hand would be his safe conduct pass. They wouldn’t kill him as long as he had the wooden hand in reserve. Before Hagen gave it to them, they’d have to tell him who killed Ronnie. That was his price. Hagen was sure that they knew.
But first he had to get back to Las Vegas.
“I need your car, Harry.”
“All right.”
Harry Needles stood up, pulled his key ring out of his pocket. He tossed the keys onto the table.
Hagen couldn’t take Harry Needles with him. He’d have to leave him here. Hagen didn’t like that but he didn’t have much choice. He’d have his hands full when he got back to Las Vegas, he couldn’t keep an eye on Harry too. But even if Harry did pick up the phone as soon as Hagen left, called someone—Marty Ray, Winnie the Poof, maybe someone Hagen hadn’t heard of—and told them that Hagen had the wooden hand, what good would it do him? Hagen was going back to Las Vegas to talk to the Legionnaires. The Legionnaires would certainly keep him safe from anyone else—at least until they got the hand.
It might be wise though to take a different route back to Las Vegas. Harry Needles and anyone he might talk to would assume that Hagen would return to town the same way they’d come out—on Highway 95. A lot could happen on Highway 95 between Laughlin and Las Vegas. It might be prudent to take the longer route back—Highway 68 out to Kingman, then Highway 93 north to Hoover Dam. It would mean an extra half hour or so, but if anyone was looking for him, they wouldn’t think to find him on that road.
