Eden's Gate

by David Hagberg

  “Maybe they want to be left alone,” Lane said. “I think that a lot of people come out here for the same reason. Nobody bothers them. Just like they want it.”

  “Where did you hear something like that?”

  “I don’t know. Read it somewhere, I guess.”

  A flinty, suspicious look came into the girl’s eyes, and she didn’t look so young or innocent as before. But it only lasted a moment, and then she was smiling sweetly again. “I’ll be going. Enjoy your breakfast.”

  “I don’t suppose the real estate offices would be open today, would they?”

  “Not until tomorrow. Are you thinking about buying something? My aunt May has her own agency. Kalispell Realty. Over in the mall.”

  “I’ll look her up,” Lane said, and he saw the girl to the door, locked it when she was gone, and secured the safety chain.

  He checked the window again; already people had begun to gather for the parade, bringing their lawn chairs and picnic coolers with them. The town was all decked out in red, white, and blue bunting swinging from streetlamps. A squad of men who looked to be in their fifties, wearing bits and pieces of military uniforms, marched by. A blue and white police car was parked on the corner, but the cop was nowhere in sight. Nor were the people he’d come here to make contact with. But that would change soon.

  He stepped away from the window and took his 9mm Beretta from the waistband beneath his sweater at the small of his back. He cycled all nine rounds out of the breach to check the action, then removed the magazine, reloaded the rounds in the same order they had come out, and stuffed the gun back in his waistband.

  Breakfast was softly scrambled eggs, a rasher of medium-done bacon, hash browns, tomato juice with a slice of lemon, and unsweetened hot tea, also with a slice of lemon. He sat down to it, one eye toward the goings-on down on the street, and the other on the door. He was a man who did not like surprises not of his own making, and he had a feeling that this town, or at least the surrounding countryside, had plenty of them.

  After breakfast he had a smoke by the open window. The street was filling up with people now, many of whom had already set up along the curbs. There were kids and dogs everywhere. In the distance to the northwest he could hear several different marching bands warming up, and every few minutes the fire engine would give a blast on its siren.

  Lane used his cell phone to make a local call. Everything would depend on timing, he thought as he waited for it to go through.

  Frances Shipley answered it on the first ring, her husky British accent mellifluous and out of place almost anywhere except in London or on stage. He and Frannie, who was a lieutenant commander in Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, had been married for one year. Lane could not imagine a life without her. Together they headed a super secret and very tiny organization of troubleshooters for the White House and number 10 Downing Street called simply “The Room.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m getting set to head downstairs. Is everything ready on your end? Tommy’s in place?”

  “He’s about a half-block out. Looks like he’s eating an ice cream cone. Cheeky bugger.”

  “Ah, some people have all the luck.”

  “Yes, don’t we, darling?” Frannie said sweetly.

  “Any sign of our people? I haven’t seen anything from here yet.”

  “They’re in town.”

  “Okay, don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Lane said, and he was about to switch off.

  “Watch yourself, William,” Frannie cautioned.

  “You, too. Ta-ta.” Lane broke the connection, pocketed the phone, and pulling on a light Gucci leather jacket, left his room and headed downstairs.

  The parade was a half hour from starting and downtown was full. Shops such as clothing stores and hardware stores, and banks, post offices, city hall, and libraries were closed for the holiday. But places like restaurants, gift shops, bakeries, and ice cream shops were open and doing a land office business. There was probably no one left in town who wasn’t here, and the tourists were easy to spot because their boots and jeans were too new, and they stood around self-consciously.

  Lane spotted the woman across the street coming out of an art gallery specializing in Indian and cowboy artifacts. She was very tall and slender, wearing a light yellow dress with large blue polka dots, and a very large, gay nineties sort of summer hat that on her looked fantastic. Her maiden name was Gloria Swanson, and like her namesake she had wanted to become a serious actor. But because of a lack of talent she’d never made it. In her late forties, however, she still turned heads.

  Lane waited in the crowd as she made her way across the street and went inside the Grand Hotel. He followed her inside in time to see her enter the lounge and take a seat at the empty bar. She took a cigarette out of her handbag, but before she could get out her lighter he was there with a match.

  “Just like in the movies,” he said.

  She turned to look at him, her eyes soft, almost unfocused, her expression supremely indifferent. Close up he could see the lines under her makeup. “Thank you,” she said, taking the light.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do mind.” She turned as the bartender, a young man with a large mustache and thick arms, came over, and she ordered a Sapphire martini; up, very dry, very cold. “Two olives, darlin’,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, Mrs. Sloan.”

  If her husband had used his real name hers would have been Mrs. Helmut Speyer, wife of a former East German Stasi intelligence officer and hit man. The West German BND had lost track of him after the Wall came down, and it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that he was positively identified masquerading as Herbert Sloan here in Montana.

  The bartender took his time making her drink, and when he was finished he came to the end of the bar where Lane had seated himself.

  “What’ll it be, sir?” he asked. His smile was fake.

  “I’ll have the same as hers, but if it’s not as cold as outer Siberia you’ll have to do it again.”

  The bartender leaned a little closer. “Whatever your game is, pal, it’s not going to work. Just a word of advice? She’s a married lady, and her husband and his pals don’t take kindly to assholes.”

  “Nice speech.” Lane grinned at him. “But I don’t think the management would take kindly to its guests being treated like this.”

  “Let’s see your room key.”

  Lane laid it on the bar. “Make that a Gibson, would you? Olives give me gas.”

  The bartender’s brows knitted for a second, but then he nodded stiffly. “Sorry for the misunderstanding, sir. But this time of year we get all kinds in here.” He glanced down the bar at the woman. “We tend to take care of our own.”

  “An admirable sentiment.”

  The bartender went to fix the drink and a moment later two men walked in. One of them was tall and very husky, his light brown hair cut very short in the military style. He wore khakis and a bush jacket, and he remained standing by the door to the lobby. If he was carrying a gun, Lane decided, it wasn’t in a shoulder holster. He wore an earpiece.

  The other man, much shorter, more compactly built, with short steel gray hair, a thin mustache, dressed in gray slacks and a blue blazer over an open collar white shirt, came directly across to the woman, who turned to him and offered her cheek.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” the man said with a hint of irritation. He was Helmut Speyer, aka Herbert Sloan.

  “I was tired of waiting,” his wife said languidly.

  The bartender broke off from making Lane’s drink. “Good morning, Mr. Sloan. Care for something?”

  “A glass of beer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Speyer glanced briefly at Lane, and then turned back to his wife and said something too low to be heard. Lane looked over at the man standing by the door. He was Ernst Baumann, aka Ernest Burkhart, Speyer’s chief of staff and bodyguard. He was staring at Lane. The German F
ederal Police also had warrants for his arrest on several charges of murder, arson and kidnapping, including three car bombings.

  Lane nodded pleasantly and smiled at the man, then turned around as his drink finally came.

  “No trouble, sir,” the bartender warned softly. “Please.”

  “There’ll be no trouble from me as long as my Gibson is cold,” Lane said loudly enough for the others to hear.

  “Finish up now,” Speyer told his wife. “The parade is just about to start.”

  Lane sipped his drink, and he had to admit that it was a lot better than he expected it would be. “This is just fine,” he said. “Tell the lady for me that she has good taste.”

  An old man, wearing a tired sport coat at least two sizes too large, his right hand in a pocket, came shuffling up Main Street. He was obviously in a lot of pain. A few people in the crowd gave him sympathetic looks, but most ignored him. He looked like a bum. He stopped in front of the Grand Hotel, hesitated for a few moments as if he was trying to make up his mind about something, then threw the last of his ice cream cone in a trash barrel and went inside.

  The front desk clerk spotted him, but before he could decide what to do, an attractive woman dressed in a short cotton skirt, a brightly colored blouse, and sandals entered from the street. She took off her large sunglasses and came over.

  “Good morning, madam,” the clerk said.

  “Ms.,” Frannie corrected him, smiling sweetly. “I was rather wondering if you have a king size nonsmoking for the next five days. Everyone else in town seems to be booked.”

  “I’m sorry, no,” the clerk said. He was a married man with three children, but he was so captivated by her looks and by her English accent that he didn’t see the old man enter the lounge.

  “Could you just check to make absolutely certain, ducky?”

  “Certainly.”

  The old man walked into the barroom. He looked so harmless that Sergeant Baumann took a moment to react. Jew, he thought, but it was already too late because the old man had pulled a gun out of his pocket and pointed it directly at Speyer’s head from a distance of only a few inches.

  Speyer turned around and grinned, a hard, flat, expressionless look in his dead gray eyes. “Well, it’s the Fourth of July and a patriot is here to celebrate. Care for a drink, old-timer?”

  The old man cocked the hammer on the military Colt .45 which had to be as old as he was, and Baumann, who had started forward, stopped short. “I know who you are, Schweinhund.”

  “Then you have me at the disadvantage,” Speyer replied calmly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before, but I’ve met so many people.” He turned to his wife, who sat with her mouth half-open in a smile. “Do you recall this gentleman from your Hollywood days, my dear?”

  “He looks like a Jew,” she said, and she turned back to reach for her drink, slopping a little of it on the bar.

  “There you are,” Speyer said. “But you must forgive my wife’s rudeness. Do you have a name?”

  Baumann edged closer, and the old man caught sight of him in the mirror behind the bar. All of a sudden he thrust the muzzle of the .45 forward so that it touched Speyer’s left cheek just below the eye. His hand began to shake. “You son of a bitch, before I kill you, you’re going to remember.” He raised the gun barrel and slashed it across Speyer’s face, opening a small gash which instantly started to bleed.

  The bartender had eased to the end of the bar where he picked up a phone.

  “Put the telephone down, young man, or I’ll shoot this man first, and then you,” the old man called out. His accent was German. The bartender did as he was told and spread his hands out.

  “Whatever the problem is, mister, we can work it out,” he said.

  “Two or three hundred grams of pressure on this trigger should do the trick nicely, I think,” the old man said. “One month before the Wall came down. Me, my wife, my son, and my daughter could wait no longer, so we decided to escape. With all that was happening, Hoennecker on the way out, Gorbachev turning his back on us, I thought it was time. The guards were lax. So many were going over to the west. Nobody cared any longer, but nobody knew when another crackdown would come.”

  “Is that what this is, a case of mistaken identity?” Speyer asked. Blood ran down his cheek but he made no move to try to stanch the flow. “You think that I was a German border guard?”

  “I never said that,” the old man said calmly.

  Speyer pursed his lips, realizing his stupid mistake. “I thought I heard—”

  “Kapitän Helmut Speyer. The East German Secret Police, Stasi. Just happening by that night.” The old man shook his head, the memory obviously painful. “You shot and killed my son and wife while I was atop the wall trying to help them over. Then you took my fourteen-year-old Lisa and offered to trade her life for mine.”

  “You took yours, obviously, though I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I took mine because the West German police were right there and pulled me the rest of the way over. I had no choice. And by the time I could get to a place where I could see, you and she were gone.”

  Speyer shook his head. “I was never there—”

  “I saw the records,” the old man shouted. “You raped her first, and then you gave her to the guards who raped her until she was dead.”

  “No,” Speyer said.

  “Oh, yes,” the old man said. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  Bill Lane fired two shots, the first catching the old man in the left armpit, spinning him around, and the second catching him in the heart. His hand went to the fatal wound which erupted in a spray of blood as he fell to the floor, dead.

  The sudden silence in the barroom was deafening. The bartender’s mouth dropped open. “Holy shit, man, you shot him.”

  “I didn’t like the odds,” Lane said. “Besides, I know the crazy old bastard. He tried to come after me in Washington a couple of months ago.” He slipped off the bar stool, and cocked an ear to listen. So far there were no sirens. “So what’s the story, folks? Self-defense?”

  “Who are you?” Speyer demanded.

  “Let’s just say that I’m a friend,” Lane said. “And as of this moment I’m a murderer, unless you can help.”

  Speyer helped his wife down. “Get the car and bring it around back, Liebchen. And hurry, would you please?”

  Gloria gave Lane a worried look, then gathered her purse and left.

  “What happened here, Willy?” Speyer asked the bartender, but keeping an eye on Lane. “Was it an accident?”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Sloan.”

  “Okay, we have about two minutes, maybe less,” Speyer said. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

  “Like I said—” Lane had begun when the muzzle of Sergeant Baumann’s pistol touched his temple.

  “Mr. Sloan asked you a question.”

  “Do you trust the bartender?” Lane asked casually.

  “That doesn’t matter. You just have to trust that I’m not going to pull the trigger if you piss me off,” Baumann said.

  “John Clark. Until a few years ago I worked for South African Intelligence. I’m a freelance now.”

  “What are you doing here?” Baumann asked.

  “Looking for a job.”

  “Working for me?” Speyer said, surprised.

  “I’m good at what I do.”

  “Killing old men?” Speyer asked.

  “Shit,” Lane said, flinching. It was enough to throw Baumann’s concentration off. Lane grabbed the sergeant’s pistol, twisted it out of his hand, and stepped aside as he brought his own gun to the man’s face. “Actually I do pretty good disarming stupid people, too.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Baumann swore.

  “Actually my mother was a saint, and I’ll thank you to remember that in the future, or I’ll take you apart bit by bit, verstehen?” Lane said. He handed Baumann back his gun. “Are you going to help me?” he asked Speyer.<
br />
  “Are you wanted by the police?”

  Lane hesitated. “Not in the United States.”

  A siren sounded outside. This time it was continuous and headed their way, not a test blast for the parade like earlier.

  “The old man came in with a gun, and this gentleman shot him in self-defense. Have you got that, Willy?”

  “Yes, sir,” the bartender stammered.

  “We were never here.”

  “No, sir.”

  “There’ll be a coroner’s hearing. When you’re released, come look me up and we’ll talk,” Speyer told Lane.

  He turned, stepped over the old man’s body, and headed to the back door. Baumann followed him, and at the end of the bar he turned and gave Lane a look that was anything but friendly.

  “Don’t try to follow me, or I’ll kill you,” Lane told the bartender when Speyer and Baumann were gone. “I’m not going to be arrested here.”

  “No, sir.”

  Lane safetied his gun, stuffed it back in his waistband, and walked out into the lobby. The clerk was gone, and Frannie was crouched down in front of the front desk. She blew him a kiss. Lane reached the front door, but the cop car was stuck in the crowd a half block up Main Street. No one outside had heard the gunshots, which meant that the call to the police had probably come from the desk clerk. And there had already been so many sirens this morning that this one was being mostly ignored. It was better this way, he thought. Less chance of an innocent bystander getting in the middle of things, something they had worried about. Or some trigger-happy cowboy jumping up and taking potshots. That would have been great.

  He worked his way through the crowd in the opposite direction from the cop car and turned right on First Street. The primary scenario was for him to show up at Speyer’s ranch outside of Crazy Horse on the Flathead River northeast of town sometime tonight. The local police would have issued an all-points bulletin for his arrest by then; armed and dangerous. And they would have called the state police for help. The manhunt would hit all the radio stations and television feeds, and it would be on all the police frequencies, something they were pretty sure Speyer’s people regularly monitored. John Clark would be legitimized.