Eden's Gate

by David Hagberg

  “What about him?” Baumann asked, his voice low.

  “He must be getting short of funds, otherwise he wouldn’t be taking such a chance.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Lane turned back to him. “Going back to Germany. I’m sure that a man of his background has to be wanted by the BKA. I’m sure that the German Federal Police would love to get their hands on him.”

  “He’s done nothing wrong in Germany to warrant his arrest.”

  Lane laughed. “You have to be kidding. Ex-Stasi? They’re still after all those guys with even more enthusiasm than they went after the old Nazis. You guys were in bed with the Russians.”

  “New papers, you should know about things like that.”

  “Now you’re working with the Russians again. Must be like old times.”

  “You’re working for us,” Baumann observed. “It means that you too are working with the Russians. And that after they killed your wife and child.”

  “Don’t go any further, Ernst,” Lane warned easily.

  Baumann shrugged. “Necessity makes strange bed fellows, that’s all I’m saying. We were good and loyal Germans working for our government. We followed orders.”

  It was the same stupid argument Nazi sympathizers had used after the war, and nobody bought it then. Didn’t these guys read history? Maybe it was something in the German spirit, Lane thought.

  “All I’m saying is don’t look back. Just do your job and get on with it,” Baumann said earnestly. “Life is too short otherwise.”

  “You’re right,” Lane said, working hard to keep a straight face. But it took nearly everything in his power not to reach over and break the bastard’s neck.

  FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY

  It was eight-thirty in the morning, local, when they touched down at Frankfurt’s Rhein Main Airport in a light rain from a solidly overcast sky. They went through passport control without a hitch, and in customs their bags were X-rayed but not opened.

  If Speyer was suspicious because of their ease of entry into a country where he was wanted by the police, he didn’t say anything. They took a cab over to the Hauptbanhof and forty-five minutes later boarded an InterCity Express train to Hamburg.

  The first-class car was only half-full. They got facing seats, a low cocktail table between them, at the back of the car away from most of the other passengers. Ten minutes after they started out of the city the conductor came by to check their tickets, and then an attendant came with a drink cart. Gloria, who was hung over, ordered a glass of champagne, while the rest of them got coffee.

  “It’s good to be back like this,” Speyer said heartily. “If those fools in Berlin can keep their heads above water while they pay the bills for rebuilding the east zone, it’ll end up like the old days.”

  “Don’t forget about the skinheads,” Lane said.

  Speyer chuckled. “They’re just kids having some fun, you know. Blowing off steam.”

  “Killing people.”

  Speyer shrugged. “Yes, but they’re mostly Turks, and some Greeks.”

  “It won’t be like the old days, though,” Baumann said with genuine nostalgia.

  “Nothing ever is, actually,” Speyer admitted. “But once you get used to the good life, Ernst, you won’t miss the old very much.”

  “Even three hundred million doesn’t go all that far,” Lane said. “That’s providing you can get the full dollar amount. In all likelihood you’ll only get ten percent of that.”

  Speyer and Baumann exchanged a knowing look. “I think we’ll manage to get by,” Speyer assured him.

  “What?” Lane asked.

  Speyer put his coffee down and glanced out the window at the passing countryside. They were out of the city now and traveling at least two hundred kilometers per hour. Everything was precise and neat; the Germans were almost as bad as the Swiss on that score. Alles in ordnung. Everything in order.

  “You might as well know the next part now that we’ve come this far. After all, it’s going to be your life on the line down there.”

  “If you’re going to talk business all the way up to Hamburg, I’m going to find the bar car,” Gloria said. She got up and made her way unsteadily forward.

  “Please forgive my wife, she’s been under a lot of strain lately,” Speyer said, with a smirk. “I don’t think that she ever completely adjusted to Montana.”

  “I understand.”

  “Well on with it, then,” Speyer said. “Ernst and I didn’t stay in Washington as I told you. In fact we got up to New York just an hour after you did.”

  “You met someone and you didn’t want me to know about it. Is that it?” Lane said.

  “That’s right. And to be honest I won’t trust you completely until this entire mission has developed.”

  “If I were in your shoes I wouldn’t either. Who did you meet?”

  “A representative of the Cuban government. When we’re finished here, we’re going to Havana.”

  “Eden?” Lane asked.

  “That’s been the code name.”

  “The Cuban government is guaranteeing you a safe haven for a specific sum of money. Is that it?”

  “A very specific sum of money,” Speyer said. “But they’re going to earn it, because they’re going to guarantee that I get the entire three hundred million, or maybe even a little more, for the diamonds, no questions asked.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The Nazis were doing human research in that bunker, as I told you they were. And it was so horrible that no one, especially not the present German government, wants anything about the place to see the light of day. The Germans, like the Swiss, are having enough trouble as it is giving back the gold that they took from the Jews. Nobody wants to open this can of worms.”

  Lane had to admire the plan, and he grinned. “That’s really very clever,” he said. “You’re going to sell the diamonds back to the German government in exchange for your silence.”

  Speyer nodded with a smug smile.

  “But you need the Cuban government to broker the deal for you, otherwise the Germans would just make their own deal with Washington and have you arrested, maybe even shot and killed on the way to jail.”

  “Cuba is our insurance policy, it’s our safe haven, and with the casinos and hotels I plan on building, it’ll be a cash cow that will last us for the rest of our lives.” He nodded in satisfaction. “In short, it’s Eden.”

  HAMBURG

  It was raining in Hamburg, too. A stiff, cold breeze came off the Elbe River; there weren’t many tourists visiting the harbor. Dozens of ships were tied up, busy loading or unloading cargo from around the world in Germany’s busiest port. They’d rented a Mercedes at the train station, and Baumann parked it at the east end of the container terminal just across the quay from the 17,500-ton motor vessel Maria, registered in Athens, Greece. He stayed in the car with Gloria. Speyer and Lane got out.

  “Is this how we’re getting to Havana?” Lane asked.

  “This is it. They’ll hide us until we clear customs. It’ll take almost two weeks to cross the Atlantic, but if there’s any dust to be settled from the operation it’ll be over by the time we arrive. No surprises. That’s how I like things, and that’s how this operation will proceed.”

  “We’ll also be sitting ducks if the crew decide they don’t like our looks.” Lane glanced back at Gloria seated in the back of the Mercedes. “Or like the looks of some of us just a little too much.”

  Speyer seemed unconcerned. “Anything’s possible. But since they won’t get the second half of their money until we dock in Havana it’s not too likely.”

  They went up the boarding ladder, entered the superstructure, and took the stairs up five decks to the captain’s quarters—just aft of the bridge. The ship was reasonably clean, though the interior spaces smelled like a faint combination of diesel oil and disinfectant. She was about six hundred feet long with a beam at the center of eighty-two feet.
r />   “How many crew are there?” Lane asked.

  “Seventeen including the officers, but she can accommodate twenty-two, so there’s plenty of room for us.”

  Captain Horst Zimmer turned out to be a ruggedly handsome man with a short gray beard and well-trimmed hair. He wore a thick fisherman’s sweater which made him look like a German version of Ernest Hemingway.

  “Helmut, you old bastard. I wondered when you were going to show up,” he shouted. He and Speyer shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulders like old friends.

  Speyer handed him a thick manila envelope. “These are your bills of lading and clearances for us once we reach Havana.” He stepped aside. “This is my new colleague, John Browne from South Africa.”

  Captain Zimmer sized up Lane and they shook hands. “Any friend of Helmut’s is a friend of mine,” he said with gusto. Lane thought that he was caught up in the middle of a B movie, but the captain was dead serious. He wasn’t playing a role.

  “Good to meet you, Captain,” Lane said.

  “John will be doing the diving for us,” Speyer said.

  Zimmer looked at Lane with new respect. “You’ve got balls, I’ll say that much for you, my man.” He shook his head in puzzlement. “I wouldn’t go down there under a hundred meters of black water for all the gold in Fort Knox. If there was any gold still stored there.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “We’re going up to Neubrandenburg this morning. What’s your schedule?”

  “It’s getting tight,” Zimmer said. “I can give you seventy-two hours, no more. By then the gear box will be back together and I’ll have no further excuses to stay in this berth. We’ll have to sail.”

  “That gives us plenty of time. I wouldn’t want to stay here much longer than that in any event.”

  “It’s settled then,” Zimmer said. He looked past Speyer to the corridor. “Where’s that beautiful wife of yours?”

  “Waiting in the car.”

  “You brought her after all?”

  Speyer nodded. “She insisted,” he said, and Zimmer’s expression darkened.

  “Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose.”

  “No,” Speyer agreed. “We’ll be back within three days.”

  “I can’t wait any longer than that.”

  “I understand,” Speyer said.

  “Good luck, then, Helmut.”

  NEUBRANDENBURG

  They were on the German plain east of Hamburg and well north of Berlin in the state of West Pomerania. Farmland, broken with stands of trees, stretched in every direction for as far as the eye could see, some of it at or actually below sea level.

  They passed through the tiny village of Neustrelitz then turned north on the secondary road around Lake Tolense. A ski chalet, the smaller version of Speyer’s house outside of Kalispell, was perched on a slight rise above the lake. The town of Neubrandenburg was ten kilometers to the north. The water of the lake looked steel gray except for the whitecaps. There were no fishermen or recreational boaters out today.

  “It’s usually very nice up here at this time of the year,” Speyer apologized.

  “A regular hotbed of tourism now that the Wall is down, I suppose,” Lane quipped.

  “Actually I was born here, and until I went away to Gymnasium in Rostock I practically lived on this lake in the summers,” Speyer said.

  “It must have been pleasant.”

  “But there’s nothing here, Helmut, except farmland and the water,” Gloria complained. “What in God’s name did you do with yourself for entire summers?”

  “About the same things you did in South Dakota when you were a child,” Speyer replied with a vicious little note in his voice.

  Gloria sat back and glowered at her husband, as Baumann drove up to the chalet and parked in the back by a large, weatherworn garage. An older man, perhaps in his mid-sixties, wearing a yellow foul-weather jacket, blue jeans, and boat shoes emerged from the house and came over to the car as they were all getting out and stretching.

  “Welcome home, Captain, it’s been too long since you were here,” he boomed. Everybody in Germany shouted.

  “It’s good to be back, Otto, even if for only a couple of days,” Speyer said warmly. “Alles ist in ordnung?”

  “Ja, natürlich, Herr Kapitän.”

  Everything was the same in this chalet as in the Kalispell house except that it was smaller and older. It smelled a little musty, too, as if it had not been occupied for a long time. The old man brought them beer and Gloria some wine.

  “When the captain said that he was a married man and would be bringing his wife with him, he neglected to say how beautiful you are, Frau Speyer,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she slurred insincerely. She glanced over at Lane and rolled her eyes.

  “Sergeant Schaub was my top sergeant in East Berlin before our unit was dissolved,” Speyer explained. He introduced Lane.

  “The captain told me yesterday that you were handy with a gun,” Sergeant Schaub said.

  “I was at the right place at the right time.” Lane took a deep draught of his beer. It was very good. “I didn’t think you could get beer like this up here.”

  “It’s not from here. That comes from Munich.”

  “Otto never drank a bad beer in his life,” Baumann said, chuckling.

  Schaub reached over and gave Baumann’s belly a playful pat. “It looks as if that cheap American beer has done you no harm.”

  “Pisswater,” Baumann pronounced. He raised his glass. “Now this, on the other hand, is beer that you can sink your teeth into, roll your tongue around, enjoy.”

  “Please,” Gloria begged sarcastically.

  Baumann was about to say something to her, but Speyer shot him a dirty look, which shut him up. Eden, Lane decided, if they ever got there, was going to be lively and interesting.

  Schaub offered them another drink and Lane held out his glass. “So what’s the situation? How far are we from the bunker?”

  Schaub poured more beer, then glanced at Speyer, who nodded. “The bunker entry is just a couple of kilometers from here, but we might have a problem. There’ve been some men here over the past few days, and some questions. We may have to delay the mission.”

  “What kind of men, Otto?” Speyer asked. “Bundes?”

  Schaub nodded. “Yes, probably federal police. They asked in town if there’d been an increase in visitors over the past few weeks.”

  “To the lake, the town, the bunker? An increase in visitors exactly where?”

  “They didn’t specify.”

  Speyer thought about it for a moment, but then shrugged. “Maybe it was a government survey.”

  “That is possible under the new order,” Schaub conceded. He brought out a bottle of good cognac. “Perhaps Frau Speyer would like something a little stronger?”

  A back room of the chalet was devoted to hunting and fishing trophies which were mounted on the walls along with the weapons used to bag them. Schaub pushed a large wool rug aside, and lifted several boards of well-worn wood flooring up, revealing a storage area five feet long, half that wide, and eighteen inches deep. From this he withdrew several bundles and aluminum cases which he laid out and opened on a long, deeply scarred table.

  In addition to a variety of pistols including SigSauers, Glock 17s, Walthers, and Berettas, along with the appropriate magazines and silencers, were a number of sniper rifles, automatic weapons, including the M-17 and AK-47, as well as a half-dozen LAWs rockets and two RPGs.

  “The demolitions and other equipment are out in the garage,” Sergeant Schaub explained. “I thought it was safer out there, away from the house.”

  Lane picked out a Beretta 9mm, the same as the gun he’d left in checked luggage at the Grand Hyatt, a Polish-made silencer, and two magazines of ammunition. “That’s quite an arsenal. Have you been expecting trouble for a very long time?”

  “It’s better to be prepared than wanting,” Schaub said.

  Baumann picked out a seven
teen-shot Glock, and Speyer one of the Walther PPKs, which was a very compact, flat weapon that was easy to conceal, though it didn’t have much stopping power.

  “If we have to use all of this we might just as well kiss off the project,” Lane prompted, looking for a response.

  “If you mean shooting German authorities, I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Speyer replied. “But we’ll almost certainly have a problem at some point with the Russians.”

  The map was very large scale, the type used by surveyors. A legend in German at the bottom advised that the starred benchmarks had been verified by satellite measurement. “It was designated Reichsamt Seventeen,” Speyer explained.

  “Reichs department seventeen,” Lane translated. “Anonymous.”

  “That’s how they wanted it in those days. And it was smart, considering what was going on down there.”

  On the map the place was marked as the Neubrandenburg War Memorial, and a small black square at the spot along the lakeshore indicated that it was a point of special interest.

  “What’s on the site?”

  “A small parking lot, an open pavilion with an eternal flame, and a small concrete structure with a steel door made to look like a maintenance shed of some sort,” Schaub reported.

  “The shed covers the actual entrance,” Speyer said.

  “Guards, caretakers?”

  “One—” Speyer began, but Schaub interrupted.

  “Sorry, Herr Kapitän, but in addition to the one guard, there have been two maintenance men doing repairs and painting the pavilion over the past few days.”

  “In the rain?” Speyer asked.

  Schaub nodded solemnly.

  “Well, we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we. And right now might be the best time of all.”

  The memorial was much larger than Lane thought it would be. The pavilion with its eternal flame was large enough to hold a hundred visitors easily, and the concrete shed was about the size of a small garage. Baumann was driving the Mercedes. He pulled into the parking lot. The wind off the lake was raw.