Eden's Gate

by David Hagberg

  “Am I going to be locked in here until mealtimes?” Lane asked, looking around the room, opening drawers, trying the lights.

  “On the contrary, you have free run of the compound. But don’t wander off, as the captain suggested; it could be dangerous to your health in more than one way. The helicopter and hangar are off limits for the time being of course, and if you happen upon a locked door—don’t try your luck.”

  “I have a couple of suitcases with my clothes and other things in the car that I’d like to have.”

  “When they’re cleared they’ll be brought to you,” Baumann said at the door. “A word of advice, Mr. Browne, don’t fuck with us, you’ll lose.”

  Lane spread his hands and smiled. “I don’t want to give anyone a bad impression. I’m here for a job. And if I get it, you and I will be working together, so I want us to be friends, or at least be able to tolerate each other. Deal?”

  “Dinner is at eight. Stay out of trouble in the meantime,” Baumann said. He left.

  Lane took off his jacket, tossed it over a chair and went into the bathroom where he splashed some cold water on his face. The door was not locked, nor were the windows secured. The telephone had a dial tone, but the red light on the closed-circuit television camera was glowing, indicating that he was being watched. He turned on the television and switched to a local channel in time to catch a news bulletin about the fatal shooting of a so far unidentified old bum in the Grand Hotel by John Clark, a hotel guest, who had disappeared after the shooting. The only witness was William Hardt, the bartender, who told police that Clark had been seated at the bar. When the old man came in, Clark jumped up, shot him in the heart as cool as could be, and walked out.

  No one had ever seen the old man before, and a manhunt was currently under way for Clark.

  Speyer was leaning against a fence in the horse paddock thinking that he was going to miss all of this. Baumann came over from the house with a file folder, and said, “He checks out, but I don’t trust him.”

  “Do you trust anybody, Ernst? Even me?” Speyer looked at his sergeant.

  “Only you, sir. But the bastard showing up here was too coincidental for me. Are you going to hire him?”

  “If he’s who he says he is, he’ll be useful.”

  “Apparently he is.”

  “The dive is going to be very dangerous, no telling what we’re going to run into down there even with the engineering diagrams to guide us. It’s been almost sixty years. If he can find the package, attach a line to it and guide it to the main entrance, it wouldn’t matter what happens afterwards.”

  Baumann looked out across the paddock to the river valley and the mountains beyond. “I hate it here.”

  “This was never more than a temporary safe haven, Ernst. We discussed that in the beginning. And it has served our purposes admirably.”

  Baumann laughed. “He was screwing deKlerk’s wife, and got out of Cape Town about two steps ahead of a firing squad. Afterwards they decided to keep quiet about it, didn’t want the embarrassment, I suppose.”

  “Then perhaps my wife will be useful after all,” Speyer said.

  “Sir?”

  “He dresses well, and he’s obviously a ladies’ man. Perhaps Gloria can keep an eye on him.”

  Baumann didn’t know what to say. He was obviously uncomfortable.

  Speyer clapped him on the arm. “Take it easy, Ernst. We have a lot of difficult, dangerous work ahead of us, but afterwards it’ll be Eden.” A snatch of some Americanism came to him, and it was annoying. Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. He shook himself out of what he knew could become a bad mood if he allowed himself the luxury. “What about the Swiss connection he mentioned?”

  “The Rover’s wiring was very sophisticated. Hans had a hell of a time with it. He told me that without Browne’s clue he might have screwed up. The son of a bitch used Swiss-made superfast electrical switches that are used on American nuclear weapons. You have to wonder how the hell he got them.”

  “Interesting,” Speyer said. “What else?”

  “He has money, or at least he did have. His suitcases—all of them matched Louis Vuitton—are filled with Armani suits, Gucci and Bruno Magli shoes and boots, silk ties, handmade shirts; everything first-class. And damned expensive.”

  “He came here looking for gold,” Speyer said, suppressing a smile. “He’s a man of expensive tastes who is probably broke, or else he wouldn’t have taken such a chance. Sounds good to me, Ernst. Just the man we’re looking for, and at just the right time we need him.”

  “That’s what I mean by coincidence,” Baumann said glumly.

  Speyer laughed, the sound harsh, and he gave his sergeant a hard look. “Thank God for some coincidences. What would you have done if the old man had actually shot me?”

  “I would have killed him.”

  “A little late for me,” Speyer said. He took the file folder from Baumann. “Ask our guest to join us for dinner, please. Cocktails at seven-thirty, I should think.”

  The dining room was across the back of the house, and floor-to-ceiling windows afforded them a magnificent view of the mountains. The long table was set for four. Speyer was dressed in a smoking jacket with a bright red ascot, while his wife wore an extremely tight black cocktail dress with almost no back and a deeply plunging neckline. At her age she nearly looked ludicrous, but not quite.

  “It seems as if you are who you say you are,” Speyer told Lane.

  “I’m glad to hear it. I was starting to get a little paranoid,” Lane said. He was dressed in an Armani linen suit, Gucci loafers without socks, and a collarless white silk shirt buttoned at the neck.

  A white-coated waiter came up. “Would you care for a drink, captain?” he asked. He was one of the men from outside whom Lane had seen in plain fatigues earlier in the day.

  “Whatever Mr. Browne is having,” Speyer said graciously.

  “Dom Perignon vintage. Let’s say ninety-three. But I want it very cold.”

  “Yes, sir,” the waiter said and he left.

  “Not Cristal?” Gloria asked.

  Lane shrugged. “But then this is Montana, madame, not Los Angeles.”

  She smiled vacantly.

  “Do you have any family back in Cape Town?” Speyer asked. “Wife and kiddies, mother and father?”

  “My mother’s in a nursing home in Willowmore, my father, who was an only child, died ten years ago, and my wife and son died in a car accident five years ago.”

  “How did it happen?”

  Lane’s eyes narrowed, and his lips compressed. “Some bloody bastards were chasing us. There was an accident and they were both killed instantly.”

  “Who was chasing you?”

  “A couple of Russian intelligence officers.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Lane looked up. “I killed them. Why did you want to know?”

  Speyer shrugged. “Something more to check. You mentioned that you were a sport diver.”

  “Actually a bit more than that. I was a Special Guards UDT officer before I transferred to the Secret Service.”

  “Mixed gasses?” Baumann asked, curiously.

  “Some, but not under combat conditions. I was trained to two hundred meters.”

  “Did you like that job?” Baumann persisted.

  “I don’t know, it was okay, I guess. Where are you taking this?”

  “How hot are you in Germany?” Speyer asked.

  “There’s a warrant for my arrest in Austria and one in Switzerland for currency violations. They’re at least three years old, and since I broke only a couple of banking laws, and nobody, especially not the Swiss, were screwed out of anything, I don’t think they’re looking very hard for me.”

  “Tell us, are you broke, Mr. Browne?” Gloria asked with some amusement.

  Lane chuckled. “I’m not impecunious, if that’s what you mean. But I’m not rolling in it either. I wouldn’t have come here looking for a job otherwise.”r />
  The champagne came. After it was poured, Speyer proposed a toast. “To our new associate, Mr. Browne with an ‘e.’ That is, if he wants the job after I tell him about it.”

  Lane raised his glass and took a drink. The wine was very cold and quite good. “What are we after, gold in some old Nazi bunker in Germany?”

  “A Nazi bunker is close, but it’s not gold we’ll be seeking,” Speyer said. “But all that will be made clear to you as and when you need the information. The problem is water, and a lot of it. What we want is at least a hundred meters deep. The dive would be very dangerous.”

  “I’ve done worst things, I suppose.”

  “The rewards would be very handsome,” Speyer said.

  “Don’t you have any competent divers on your staff?” Lane asked.

  “Frankly, no. It was an issue that we were just starting to come to grips with. Will you take the job?”

  “What if I say no?”

  Speyer just laughed.

  Lane grinned. “Well, I did come all this way looking for employment, and I have put my arse on the line.” He turned to Gloria. “Pardon the expression, madame.” He raised his glass. “I’m yours, Herr Kapitän. Let’s drink to, if not a long association, at least a profitable one.”

  “Prost,” Speyer said, and they all drank.

  After dinner Lane went outside on the porch to get some fresh air and have a smoke. Gloria joined him, and took a cigarette.

  “It gets cold here,” she said. “I’m glad we’re finally leaving.”

  “Where are we going—that is, if I’m included in the move?” Lane asked. It was dark, and there were a billion stars in the moonless sky. The temperature had already dropped to the low fifties.

  “Helmut will tell you when the time comes,” she said. She wasn’t wearing a wrap, and she shivered. “It’s too cold out here for me. I’m going in.”

  “I’ll stay awhile,” Lane said.

  At the patio door she gave him an oddly appraising look. “What does impecunious mean?”

  “Flat broke.”

  “I see,” she said, and she went inside.

  Lane walked down from the house toward the river. A hundred yards to the west was a small orchard of apple trees. He angled over to them, and when he was certain that no one was following him, pulled out his phone and hit the speed dial for the Kalispell number. Frannie answered on the first ring.

  “Shipley and Hughes Accounting. Our office hours are from ten A.M. to six P.M. Eastern. At the tone please leave your message.”

  “What if this were an emergency, and I had to wait for all of that?” Lane asked.

  “Don’t get testy on me, love. Are you all right?”

  “So far so good. They’ve offered me a job, diving, but according to Speyer it’s not gold they’re after.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know, but apparently we’re going to Germany, to a Nazi bunker, so our BKA friends in Berlin got at least that right.”

  “I’ll pass it back to them, and see if they’ve come up with anything new.”

  “Baumann is suspicious of me, so I don’t know how long it’ll be before they discover this phone and take it from me. It looks like we’ll be leaving here soon, so keep on your toes, but don’t crowd us.”

  “Don’t take any unnecessary chances, William. This isn’t rocket science, after all.”

  “We’re in the wrong business for not taking chances,” Lane said. Someone had come out of the house and was smoking a cigarette on the porch. Lane could make out the figure, but not who it was. “How is everything at your end? Is Tommy okay?”

  “The dear old man is about to have a heart attack laughing at me,” Frances said seriously.

  “Let me guess, it was because you called the hotel clerk ducky.”

  “I am a Brit.”

  “But ducky?” Lane demanded. The figure moved off the porch and headed down the hill. “Got to go, love. I’m about to have some company.”

  “Take care, William.”

  “You too.”

  Lane got halfway up the hill before he could see that the figure was Baumann. He waved and Bumann stopped and waited for him to come the rest of the way.

  “What were you doing down there?”

  “I was trying to spot one of your bears,” Lane said. He grinned. “But they mustn’t be out and about yet.”

  “You were told not to wander around.”

  “I didn’t know that accepting a job offer meant that I’d be restricted to quarters.”

  “It meant that you follow orders.”

  Lane shrugged. “Whatever.” He glanced back toward the river. “How about tomorrow? Is there any trout in that stream? I’d like to try my luck.”

  “There won’t be any time. We’re leaving first thing in the morning.”

  “To where?”

  “You’ll find out when we get there.”

  “What about my car?”

  “It stays here,” Baumann said. “And that’ll be all the questions. You’ll be told what you need to know when you need it.”

  In the distance to the southwest a Fourth of July rocket burst very low on the horizon. “Too bad we couldn’t be in town tonight to catch the celebration. I’m in a mood to party.”

  “I wasn’t aware that South Africans were so interested in American holidays.”

  Lane laughed. “Lighten up, Ernst. A party’s a party. It’s got to get pretty boring up here after places like Berlin. Not much to do, unless you like trout fishing or dodging bears.”

  Baumann’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t fuck with me, Browne. If you so much as fart at the wrong time I’m going to jam my hand down your throat and rip your heart out.”

  “Right,” Lane said. He stepped around Baumann and headed back up to the house. He got two steps and he turned around. “Don’t bother coming up to tuck me in, Ernst, I think I can manage on my own.”

  Speyer was on the veranda, drinking a beer and watching the distant fireworks. Baumann went up to him. “I don’t trust the bastard.”

  “Don’t be tedious, Ernst. We’ve already had this discussion, unless you’ve learned something new.”

  “He could be a plant.”

  “What, a BND agent all the way here from Munich? You said he checked out.”

  “Creating a background isn’t all that difficult,” Baumann said.

  Speyer considered it for a moment but shook his head. “If German intelligence suspected that we were up to something, let alone where we had gotten ourselves to, they would have sent more than one man to check us out. And I don’t think they would have gone so far as to kill a man just to get in my good graces.”

  “Maybe they faked the shooting.”

  “I saw the blood with my own eyes. And Browne’s gun checked out. The APB is on all the wires. If the BND wanted us, they would have asked the CIA for help, and with that bureaucracy they would have raised a dust cloud all the way from Washington that we couldn’t have missed.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Baumann said.

  “I know I’m right, Ernst. I did some checking of my own. There is no CIA operation against us in the works. Guaranteed.”

  “What about the FBI?”

  “My Washington contact would have heard if anything was in the wind. And there’s nothing. Browne is a smart-talking bastard, but he’s the right man for us at the right time and place. The moment he retrieves the package, he’s yours. Until then he’s mine. Do you understand?”

  Baumann nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Fine,” Speyer said after a beat. “Now be a good sergeant and fetch me another beer, would you?”

  Speyer retired to his quarters around midnight after making sure that the night shift was on duty and nothing was going to blindside them. Gloria was lying back on the couch in the sitting room, the lights low, watching the closed-circuit television monitoring Lane’s room. He was in bed and apparently asleep.

  “How long have you been watching?” Speyer as
ked, more amused than annoyed.

  She was half-drunk on champagne. She looked up and grinned. “For a couple of hours. Since he came back.”

  “Did he leave the bathroom door open for you, my dear?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He doesn’t have as much hair as you, Helmut, but he has more muscles. Does that make you sore?”

  “Not at all,” Speyer said. “As a matter of fact I want you to keep an eye on him for me.”

  “He’s got a big prick, too,” Gloria said. She was baiting him, but it wasn’t working tonight. He no longer gave a damn.

  Speyer laughed. “I hope you find him amusing.”

  “Oh, anything but that.”

  “Well, we’re getting an early start in the morning, so if I were you, I’d come to bed soon.” Speyer kissed his wife on the cheek, then headed for the bathroom.

  “Helmut, do you know what impecunious means?” she called to him.

  “Of course. It means he’s dead broke. Didn’t you know the word?”

  She turned back to the television without answering him, the vacant look back in her eyes as she poured another glass of wine.

  2

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Everything Speyer did seemed to be first-class, down to the plush carpeting and leather upholstery in the Gulfstream jet. But reading between the lines Lane got the impression that all of this—the plane, the cars, the lavish spread in Montana—was straining him to the limit, and he’d been forced into working on something very dangerous that would somehow fill the coffers once and for all. The big score.

  Like a lot of ex-Stasi officers, Speyer was nothing but a two-bit thug, albeit a well-to-do two-bit thug.

  They landed at Washington’s Reagan Airport a few minutes before 5:00 P.M. local, where a Lincoln Town Car limousine driven by a uniformed chauffeur was waiting for them. Speyer dismissed the captain, copilot, and steward for the night, but cautioned them to remain on call and sober. They would be staying at the Holiday Inn Downtown on Thomas Circle, and Speyer did not want to chase around town trying to find them if he needed to take off in a hurry.