The Berlin Target

by Nick Carter

  Then, hangers and all, he walked them to her and dropped them on the floor. He lifted her like a feather from the vanity stool and set her on her feet in the middle of the clothing.

  He fumbled in the randomly thrown pile of clothing until he withdrew a dress.

  "Put this on and pull yourself together. We'll deal with your paranoia later."

  Delaine grimaced in distaste at the garish red dress he thrust into her hands.

  "Must I?"

  "You must."

  "And if I don't?"

  "If you don't, little girl, I'll really give you something to divorce me over! I need you on that stand today. It would be a slap in the face of the others if you weren't there, standing by my side."

  "Would you hit me again, Stephan? You're very good at doing that so it doesn't show."

  Without warning, he slammed his balled fist into her stomach. She gasped and crumpled into a fetal ball in the middle of the pile of clothing.

  "That answer your question?" he hissed.

  She gagged.

  "Ten minutes. Be ready."

  He stomped from the bedroom, and Delaine pulled herself to her feet. Still fighting nausea from the pain, she reached for the red dress. She hated it; it wasn't her style at all, a red, scoop-necked, sheath-skirted design that she considered too bright and cheap-looking for her taste. But Stephan had been adamant when he bought it for the trip.

  Until now she had refused to wear it.

  "Oh, God," she whispered, sliding the slinky garment over her head. "Hurry, Lisa, hurry! Come and take me away from this madman!"

  * * *

  Horst Vintner was a big man with a thick, round neck. The connection was so strong that head, shoulders, and body turned all at the same time, as if one section were immobile without the aid of the other two. The eyes, deep-set and slow-moving, digested all they saw, passing over nothing.

  At that moment they were scrupulously scanning the windows and rooftops around the perimeter his men had set up for the rally. Not that he was overly worried. The dignitaries were minor, not really of any interest to what survived of the terrorist groups in West Berlin.

  The assignment was actually very routine. Vintner and his SSD team were there to snap pictures and get names, if possible, of the demonstrators. There was no expectation of trouble.

  Horst Vintner had been a policeman his entire life. He had chased thieves, con men, rapists, murderers, and terrorists. The job of heading an SSD team to guard visiting VIPs and to control possible demonstrations was merely something to keep him busy until retirement.

  Vintner was sixty-two years old, and his retirement was six months away.

  "They are arriving, sir."

  "I see that, Bruchner. Pick out two men who look the most conspicuous and put them on each end of the steps."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And inform the uniformed officers to block off the rest of this side of the boulevard."

  "Yes, sir."

  Vintner's aide moved away through the gathering crowd, and he applied a match to the bowl of his pipe.

  His superiors had told him that morning that there had been death threats to the American. Stephan Conway. Vintner had talked to Conway at his hotel shortly after that over the phone.

  "It's probably a sort of personal vendetta more than anything else, Herr Vintner. I was the victim of an attempted blackmail quite some time ago in the States. I thought that when I had told them to go to hell, it would die away. But lately the threats have become more strange."

  Vintner didn't inquire into the blackmail. At that point it wasn't part of his job. Keeping Herr Stephan Conway alive while he was on German soil was his job.

  As Horst Vintner puffed his pipe and scanned the crowd, he wished he were back chasing murderers or retired, one or the other.

  This in-between duty was hell.

  * * *

  As Dieter Klauswitz saw the first speaker step to the podium he went over the schedule of the rally that Hessling had given him.

  There were to be four speakers in all. The American, Stephan Conway, would be the last. At the end of his speech, Conway's wife, and the three German speakers and their wives, would move to the front of the steps.

  There they would stand at attention in a line, while the anthems of both countries would be played.

  "That, Pilgrim, is when you fire. Not before."

  He took another range-sighting through the Fl scope, from the man at the podium back down the line of the seated scheduled speakers. He found the erect figure of Stephan Conway dressed in a light tan summer suit. Beside him, in a vivid red dress, her eyes on her lap, was the American businessman's wife.

  * * *

  Oskar Hessling was never a cheap thief. He had started out his life of crime as a procurer of flesh for the brothels of Beirut and the rest of the Middle East. Young virgins from a poverty-stricken Germany were sent into white slavery in these brothels, and if they were especially attractive — blond and buxom — they were shoved on into the harems of desert sheiks.

  It was a profitable business, and allowed Hessling to expand. In the years between 1960 and now, he had formed a criminal empire based on dope, prostitution, extortion, blackmail, pornography, and the sale of illegal arms.

  It was known that he would buy and/or sell anything to or from the Eastern bloc of nations, including Mother Russia.

  It wasn't surprising that Boris Simonov, as Peter Limpton, had set up a channel to do business with Hessling.

  What was surprising was the fact that West German authorities knew much of Hessling's business, and yet had never been able to turn a single arrest into an indictment.

  Carter, as he slipped the man's file into his briefcase, wondered what he could come up with if the entire security apparatus and police departments of the West German government had been unable to come up with anything.

  "You don't sound happy," Lisa said from beside him. "You rarely sigh."

  "Dead end," Carter replied, squeezing her hand. "I'll tell you about it later."

  They were descending on their final approach to Tegel Airport. From the air. West Berlin looked like a solo piece of a jigsaw puzzle. It was bounded by one hundred miles of concrete wall and the fifty-yard-wide German Democratic Republic "death strip." The sand floor of the "death strip" was meticulously raked fine each morning. Even the mark of a crawling snake could be detected between the two concrete walls.

  Carter narrowed his eyes and looked at the city without seeing the wall and the strip. It was huge and beautiful, with its fifty square miles of lakes, parks, and woodlands with deer and wild boar and forests. It was the largest green area of any city in the world and. Carter knew, one of the reasons West Berliners didn't go stir crazy in their isolation from the rest of West Germany.

  The landing was smooth, and they were through customs in less than fifteen minutes.

  Carter had cal led ahead to reserve two suites at the Victoria on the Kurfürsten Damm. It was a thirty-minute ride by taxi from Tegel into the center of the city, and they both were silent for most of the trip.

  At the door of Lisa's suite. Carter brushed her cheek with his lips.

  "You've been up all night. Get a quick nap before seeing your sister at three. I'll make a few phone calls and do some nosing around."

  She nodded, gratitude in her eyes, and followed her porter into the suite. Carter moved to his own room down the hall and tipped the porter.

  When the man was gone, he sat on the bed by the phone and lit a cigarette. From a narrow break between the leather walls of his wallet, he extracted a thin sheet of foolscap. On it, in Carter's own personal code, were fifty names and telephone numbers.

  "Guten Tag, World Bank."

  "Jamil Erhanee, bitte."

  "Bitte."

  He had to go through two more secretaries before he heard the familiar voice speaking German with a heavy Indian accent.

  "Jamil, this is Nick Carter. How's it going?"

  "Oh, Christ, the Russians ar
e coming over the wall at last. How long do we have?"

  Carter chuckled. "Not quite as bad as all that, my friend. In fact, I'm here more for social reasons than business."

  "That's so much crap, but it is good to hear you're still alive."

  "Thanks so much. I'd like to pick your brains, memories of your sordid youth."

  "Where are you?"

  "The Victoria, on the Ku'Damm."

  "I'm in the middle of it until around six."

  "That's all right. How about seven in the hotel bar?"

  "Sounds good. Anything — or anyone — you're particularly interested in?"

  "Yeah, a top dog named Oskar Hessling."

  "Oh, my, let's make it the Golden Calf then. It's a transvestite club on Roscher Strasse, off the Ku'Damm."

  "Suits me. Any particular reason?"

  "Yeah. Hessling owns it. He drops in now and then. Who knows, you may see the fat pig in person."

  "Seven it is. Ciao."

  "Wiedersehen."

  Carter punched out his cigarette and lay back on the bed. If anyone could tell him about or get him close to Oskar Hessling, it was Jamil Erhanee.

  It was quite a few hours until seven, and nothing would be happening between now and then besides Lisa's meeting with her sister at three.

  Carter closed his eyes. He could use a nap himself.

  Six

  Dieter Klauswitz's hands beneath the black driving gloves were sweating slightly. That was understandable, and Klauswitz knew it wasn't fear. It was anticipation, the anticipation of properly executing a well-engineered plan with tremendous rewards at its end.

  As Stephan Conway finished his speech, he stepped back from the podium. The sound of equal cheering and jeering from the crowd reached Klauswitz's ears, but he closed it out.

  Now all of his attention was riveted to the top steps of the library. The three Germans, their wives on their arms, stood. In a line, vague smiles plastered on their faces, they moved forward toward Conway.

  The woman in the red dress sat, immobile, as she had through all the speeches, including her husband's.

  "Move, damn you, move!" Klauswitz hissed, seeing the frown on Conway's face.

  At last the American stepped back, took his wife by one elbow, and tugged her forward with him. As the strains of the West German anthem filled the air, partially quieting the crowd, the tan suit and the red dress joined the line.

  The F1 was a bolt-action rifle. The marksman slid the bolt back and then forward, jamming one of the deadly shells into the chamber. He disengaged the safety behind the trigger, and then caressed the trigger itself with his right index finger.

  "Damn, damn, damn!" he hissed as the anthem went on and on and both of them remained closed off from his line of fire by others in the line.

  Now the first thought of fear entered Klauswitz's mind.

  What if they stayed like that through the American anthem? He would never get a clear shot. And then there would be milling around before moving down the steps to the limousines.

  "Damn!"

  The Star-Spangled Banner" built, and sweat popped out in beads on Klauswitz's forehead.

  Then it happened. Conway took a step forward, his back ramrod straight, his big shoulders squared, his knuckles almost white where he gripped his wife's elbow.

  She had no choice but to step forward as well.

  Klauswitz inhaled, exhaled slowly, until nearly all breath was expelled and his entire body was relaxed.

  Then he squeezed.

  * * *

  Horst Vintner was standing thirty feet in front of the podium and slightly to the side at the bottom of the steps. He made his body rigid as it reacted to the martial music.

  But his eyes never stopped moving. They swept the steps and the people on them constantly.

  It was Vintner who reacted first when he saw the red dress just above the woman's left breast explode.

  The hand-held radio was at his lips and he was running up the steps as fast as his sixty-two-year-old legs would carry him.

  "Seal off all the streets as far as two over from the Mehring! Stop all traffic from leaving the boulevard as well! The woman has been shot!"

  Vintner saw everything at once as he plowed into Stephan Conway's gut.

  The woman was already dead, her eyes still open, staring dumbly as she slipped to the steps.

  His two men were running toward the center of the steps, and the others stood, staring and flatfooted. None of them had, as yet, realized what was happening.

  Vintner and Conway hit the steps in a pile. They had barely stopped rolling when, less than a foot from Conway's shoulder, Vintner saw a long gouge appear in the concrete. He heard the ricochet, and saw a uniformed officer near the library door grab his right thigh.

  Vintner covered Conway's body with his own. "Lie still! Don't move!"

  "My wife…"

  "Your wife is dead. He's still shooting!" Vintner rolled to his back, and heard Conway grunt from the weight.

  Everything flashed through the veteran policeman's mind and across his eyes at the same instant.

  The wide walk at the foot of the steps and the boulevard beyond were chaos. The two ends of the Mehring and the wider perimeter seemed calm other than massed traffic.

  Everyone was doing his job.

  Angle was from above… the woman wasn't lifted from her feet by the force of the slug… she was driven down and back… the second slug was also from above… nearly straight down into the concrete.

  Vintner's eyes cased the roofs of the office buildings and high-rise apartment houses across the boulevard even as he barked this information into his radio.

  "The roofs! Don't let anyone — man, boy, woman, or dog — out of the area!"

  The replies came fast and furious.

  "All building exits secured, sir!"

  "Mehring secured!"

  "Perimeter tight, sir!"

  Vintner lowered the radio. "Bruchner!"

  "Here, sir!"

  The man was already crouching at Vintner's shoulder, his own body adding to the shield over Conway, his service revolver in his hand.

  "There was a uniform hit, back by the door."

  "Yes, sir, in the thigh. But he's dead."

  "Good God, did it hit an artery?"

  "No, sir, just a scrape on the side of the leg, but he's dead."

  Vintner's experienced brain was already putting it together.

  Flesh wound, but it killed.

  Cyanide-tipped bullets.

  A professional hit.

  * * *

  Dieter Klauswitz had barely seen the result of the second slug before the helmet was on his head and he was hurtling down the other side of the Insulaner.

  He covered the distance to the swimming pool in seconds, and even though he had sprinted full tilt, he was breathing normally when he slowed to a walk.

  He took the steps calmly to the street level, one at a time, and fired up the BMW. The traffic on that side of the Insulaner was not yet even aware of the chaos on the other side in front of the library.

  He headed south on Tempelhofer Damm, past the old airport. Around him, going in both directions, were cyclists dressed exactly like himself. At the south end of Steglitz, he bore right.

  In a huge arc that would take him nearly three quarters of the way around the city, he rode, using main arteries and side streets about equally.

  Avoiding the east-west highway, he zigzagged through all side streets in smaller residential neighborhoods toward Zehlendorf. At the park, he struck north again toward Hallensee. Once there, he zipped onto the highway and ground the throttle open.

  At eighty-five miles an hour it took him no time to reach the Muller Strasse cutoff and drop down into Wedding.

  Wiebe Strasse was deserted except for one old man at its north end who didn't look up as Klauswitz idled past.

  Inside the garage, with the door closed, he checked the time.

  With the mobility of the motorcycle over a car, he
had traveled practically three quarters of West Berlin's ring in fourteen minutes.

  He stripped out of the leathers and threw them aside. The tie went on first, under the collar and knotted, then the jacket. He transferred the suitcase and briefcase to the front of the car, and two minutes after pulling into the garage on the BMW, he pulled out in the white Mercedes.

  He turned north toward Tegel Airport, always moving away from the scene. As it had been with the BMW, there were white Mercedeses around him at almost every stoplight.

  At the traffic circle in front of the airport, there was a roadblock.

  He had expected it. He could have avoided it by using one of the smaller streets to go around Tegeler Lake, but instead he joined the line. There were only three cars in front of him.

  "Guten Tag, mein Herr."

  "Guten Tag. What's the trouble?"

  "Just a check for insurance cards, mein Herr."

  Deiter Klauswitz handed over the rental car papers. The officer scarcely glanced at them.

  "You are taking the airport road, mein Herr?"

  "No, I have business in the Spandau district. I'm an American."

  The man's expression changed at once. He scanned the passport briefly and handed it back. "Very good, Herr Klein. You may go out of the line here. The Schwarzer Weg south around the See. It will be faster."

  "Thank you."

  "Bitte sehr."

  He wheeled the Mercedes out of the line and made the left turn that would take him down to the scenic, tree-lined Schwarzer Weg and around the huge lake. He drove well within the speed limit. According to his watch, he still had twenty-three minutes.

  Around the lake, he crossed over the Hovel River and speeded up on the Nellendover Strasse north.

  At Spandau Prison he made the huge arc that went around the grounds and found the tourist parking lot. He rescued the briefcase and suitcase, locked the car, and walked back to the boulevard after placing the keys on top of the left front tire under the fender well.

  It took him thirty seconds to flag down a passing cab.