“What about the Russian Washington rezident?”
“Lukashin? He’s in a fair amount of financial trouble even for a modern Russian. From what I can gather he’s in to the Russian Mafia for something approaching a half-million dollars. And those folks don’t accept excuses. So the man is well-motivated. But Mironov, his number two, is a rather nasty character with Russian Mafia ties up in Brighton Beach. He’s got a vendetta for some reason against a South African by the name of John Browne.”
“Don’t worry about it—” Lane said, but Hughes cut him off.
“He’s on his way to Germany, William, even as we speak. He flew over this noon. Should be arriving in Frankfurt am Main around midnight your time.”
“Okay, I’ll watch for him. But we have another problem. I spotted what looks like a surveillance operation behind the house that we’re staying at. It’s on the Tollense See. My guess would be BKA.”
“They probably followed you from Frankfurt. Maybe it’s for the best.” Hughes, who was sometimes a Dutch uncle to Lane, was concerned.
“Tell them to back off. I still don’t know what the hell Speyer is up to, and I don’t think the Germans do either. But they’re worried.”
“So am I,” Hughes said.
“That makes three of us,” Frances broke in. “What now, love?”
“I’m going to take another look at the bunker entrance; a little later tonight we’re meeting with the Russians, and in the morning I’m going for a swim.”
“Dammit, William—” Frances protested.
“Take it easy, kiddo, I’ll be okay,” Lane said, and he rang off before they could give him more of an argument. He stood in the relative darkness for a long time staring at the woods, wondering just what the hell was down in the bunker that had Speyer so willing to face the risk of returning to Germany, and for the German Federal Police to take such an interest that they asked for American help. He also wondered why he was pushing this operation so far, but he wasn’t quite willing yet to examine his motivations too deeply. It was Satchel Paige who once said don’t look over your shoulder, something might be gaining on you. Lane figured that he knew exactly what the man was talking about.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Hughes hadn’t been home in the week since Lane had gone off on assignment. His wife Moira and the girls understood perfectly. Lane was Uncle Bill to them, a part of the family. If Lane was in any danger it was only natural that Tom remain at his post to do whatever was necessary. What surprised him, however, was how badly Frances was taking this.
Their offices were near the vice preisdent’s residence in what had once been the chief astronomer’s quarters on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Normally there were a half-dozen staffers on duty, mostly communications specialists and analysts, but this afternoon it was just him and Frances.
He went down the hall to her office, and found her standing by the window, looking toward the observatory. There were a lot of tourists today, but she didn’t seem to be watching them. He walked over and took her into his arms. He was a very large man, and she was slight of figure, almost boyish. She looked up and gave him a smile.
“If you’ve come to cheer me up, I can use it,” she said brightly, though he could see that her eyes were troubled.
“On the contrary, we’re finally alone and I’m a lecher.”
“Good, I need that, too.” Her lower lip quivered.
“He’s a rather remarkable man, you know. He’ll be okay.”
She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. Her face was round and pretty. Her eyes were wide and startlingly green; clear, honest, warm. “I didn’t think it would be this way when I agreed to sign on.”
“Fiddle faddle. You’re a full commander in Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, you knew exactly what this was all about.” Hughes gave her a large smile, one that couldn’t be resisted. “The fact of the matter is you’re jealous. He’s out having all the fun, while you’re sitting home knitting booties.”
Something flashed in her eyes, but then was gone. She grinned. “You are a masher, and at the first opportunity I plan on telling Moira.”
“She already knows,” Hughes said. “But you’re safe for the moment because I have to make a call to the Germans.”
BERLIN
It was beyond his dinnertime and Chief Inspector Dieter Schey was about to leave for home when he took the call from Tom Hughes in Washington. When they had asked for help from the Americans he hadn’t counted on this, and the dark brows on his narrow, pinched face knitted in anger.
“Of course it is your jurisdiction, but William has simply asked for a little elbow room,” Hughes said.
“We’ve given your man enough latitude as it is,” Schey replied tightly. He considered himself to be a reasonable man, but there was an unusual amount of pressure from above to get this case settled quickly and as quietly as possible.
“In for a penny, in for a pound. But I suppose I can understand your position, Chief Inspector. I’ll get word to him to break off.”
“Verdammt,” Schey swore softly. “We came to you for help, so if it’s room he wants, it’s room we’ll give him. But I’ll have to clear it with my superior. We had hoped to keep a reasonably tight rein on what’s happening up there.”
“And I don’t blame you,” Hughes commiserated. “Of course it would be a great help if you could tell us exactly what he’s going to run into down in that bunker—if it gets to that point.”
“I sincerely hope it doesn’t. All we want is Speyer and Baumann behind bars, and their organization, the Friends, closed down permanently. They’re all a bunch of murderers and thieves, just like the old Odessa. And they have an agenda.”
“Which includes Reichsamt Seventeen, on which I can find no information whatsoever.”
“The bunker is of secondary importance. They’re probably after gold. What we’re interested in is what he’s going to do with his money.”
“That’s what we mean to help you discover if you’ll give William the room.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Grüss Gött,” Hughes said, and rang off.
Schey sat back for a moment, not at all happy that he had been maneuvered so easily, but then got up and went down the hall to the office of the director of BKA Special Operations, General Bruno Schaeffer. The general’s secretary passed him straight in.
Schaeffer was a bull of a man, with a one meter, sixty centimeter chest, a farmer’s square face and broad eyes. But he was smart, and it was said that most of the time he knew what you were thinking even before you knew it yourself.
Schey came to attention. “I’ve just spoken with the Americans. They want us to discontinue our surveillance operation at Tollense See.”
“As a condition for their continued assistance?” the general asked mildly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then give them what they want,” General Schaeffer said. Four lines on the telephone console were blinking. He ignored them, giving Schey his undivided attention. “Or at least make it appear as if you have given them what they want. Evidently your men up there got careless. Tell them to withdraw, and then return without being so obvious.”
Schey allowed a smile. “I understand, Herr General. But it would be helpful if I had more information. For instance—”
The general picked up his phone and answered one of his calls as if Schey wasn’t in the room. After a brief moment Schey turned on his heel and left. Supper would be late tonight. Very late.
NEUBRANDENBURG
Lane got a glass of beer from Schaub in the kitchen then went into the great room to sit by the fire. The evening was raw and he’d gotten chilled in the garage, made all the more worse by thinking about tomorrow’s dive. Gloria, a crocheted afghan over her shoulders, sat with her feet tucked up under her at the end of the long couch. She was drinking champagne. The bottle was on the floor at her hand.
“Maybe you should think about laying of
f the booze for a while,” he said. “Give your liver a rest.”
“Screw yourself,” she said mildly. She took a drink, looking at him over the rim of the glass. “I haven’t noticed that men much give a damn whether a woman is drunk or not. In fact most of you bastards would prefer it that way.”
“That depends on the class of men you’re trying to seduce,” Lane said. He went over and took the bottle from her. “You’ve had enough.”
There wasn’t much left in the bottle. What there was he poured into the edge of the fire, a champagne steam rising up into the chimney with a hiss. Standing by the massive hearth, with the tall windows at the end of the room looking out across the lake, boars’ heads and deer racks hanging on the log walls, they could have been in another time, the thirties in Nazi Germany, for all the rustic malevolence here.
“What do you give a damn for?” Gloria asked.
“I don’t like to see people destroying themselves,” Lane told her. “Or being destroyed. It’s a stupid waste of time.”
“Like your wife and child?”
Lane drank his beer. Someone had put some new logs on the fire and they were going good, the changing pattern of flames mesmerizing.
“I’m a movie buff, and I saw the one picture that you were in,” he said.
“I didn’t think anyone had seen it, but I’d hoped that those who did would have had the decency never to say so.”
It was a practiced line, dripping with contempt, and yet there was a sad expression on her face, as if she was grateful that at least one person had seen her film and wasn’t laughing at her.
“You weren’t God’s gift to acting, but you photographed well. I think you could have probably made a decent career for yourself. What happened?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “That,” she said.
“That what?”
She knocked back the rest of her champagne, and casually threw the glass into the fireplace. She hunched deeper into the couch. “That’s a very long story.”
“I wouldn’t think that it would be a short one,” Lane said. “What happened?”
“I was a woman of principles, if you can believe that.” She laughed bleakly. “When sleeping around could have done me some good. I behaved myself. But by the time it was too late and no one gave a damn, I said the hell with it and let myself go.” She appealed to Lane. “Kinda dumb, don’t you think?”
“Kinda dumb,” Lane agreed. “But drinking yourself to death won’t solve anything.”
She laughed again. “Did I mention that I was offered a role in a porn film last year?” She shook her head. “I turned them down, of course. But a couple of months ago I said what the hell. But when I called the producer, he turned me down. I’ve got a bad sense of timing.”
Speyer came from upstairs. “Regaling John with your Hollywood exploits?” he asked.
Lane looked up. “Actually we were talking about the weather. Doesn’t it ever get to be summer here?”
“The Baltic is only sixty kilometers north of here,” Speyer said. He took a cigarette and a light from Lane. “Seems as if the FBI is interested in your handiwork in Kalispell.”
“Did they find out anything?”
Speyer shook his head.
Gloria threw off the afghan, got up and stepped into her shoes. She was wearing tight jeans and a thick turtleneck. “I’m going upstairs to take a bath.”
“You might want to hear the rest, my dear,” Speyer told her, and she gave him a worried look. “The FBI came poking around at the ranch, but of course there was nothing for them to find.”
“What about my car and the ordnance I brought with me?” Lane asked.
“It’s well hidden, trust me,” Speyer assured him. “They were asking questions around town, too, but they didn’t find out anything there either. Nor will they.”
Gloria stood quietly, as if she knew that she was going to hear some bad news.
Speyer glanced at her, but then turned back to Lane. “You see, the only weak link was Willy Hardt, the bartender. Besides the three of us and Ernst, Willy was the only other witness to the shooting. And he’s been taken out of the picture. Permanently.”
“You bastard,” Gloria said softly. She brushed past him and went upstairs.
“That was a little extreme,” Lane suggested. He should have thought of that. They could have arranged to take Hardt into custody on something unrelated.
“On the contrary, as I said, he was a weak link,” Speyer replied. Gloria had stopped at the head of the stairs and was listening. Speyer ignored her. “Besides, I tend to take exception to men sleeping with my wife.”
“I see.”
“Ernst tells me that you’d like to take another look at the memorial tonight,” Speyer said. “It’s a good idea. I was going to suggest it myself. Why not right now?”
Schaub took them to the memorial in his old Mercedes 300TD station wagon, figuring that the familiar car on these roads at night would attract less attention than a fancy new car from out of the area. There was a padlocked chain across the driveway to the parking lot.
“Don’t stop. Just drive by,” Lane told him from the back seat.
Schaub did as he was told, and as they passed they saw a momentary flash of light as if someone had opened a door or a window curtain and then immediately closed it.
“There’s a caretaker on duty overnight,” Schaub explained.
“Is that something new?” Speyer asked.
“No, it’s always been this way.”
“What about at other war memorials?” Lane asked. “Are they guarded around the clock, too?”
“Some are and some aren’t. It depends.”
“On what?”
Schaub glanced at Lane’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “It depends on how important the memorial is. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Berlin, places like that. And it also depends on whether there’s been any vandalism. There’s been a lot of that over the past few years because of the skinheads.”
“Boys having fun,” Speyer said dismissively.
“Which is it here?” Lane asked. “The importance or the vandalism?”
“Well, there’s been no vandalism, I can tell you that much.”
A Mercedes panel truck turned off the lake road and bumped up the gravel roadway to the rear of the chalet a few minutes after midnight. The legend DF 1, GERMAN TELEVISION ONE, was painted on the side. Two men got out.
“I thought there were supposed to be four of them,” Lane said softly in the darkness of the back entry.
“There were,” Speyer replied. “Maybe the others are still in the truck, or maybe they felt that there was no need for all of them to meet with us tonight.”
“Or maybe something has gone wrong.” Lane signaled to Baumann, who was waiting across the driveway in the garage.
Baumann moved forward slightly just out of the darkness so that Lane could see him. Like Lane, he was armed. There was no telling how the Russians were going to act tonight. They were in Germany under deep cover that was now possibly blown, and they did not want to go back to Russia. Life was a lot better here than it was in Moscow. They might simply shoot and run once they received the first half of their payment. It was a possibility that Lane had suggested, and Speyer had reluctantly agreed. Thus the precaution.
“Let me handle this,” Speyer said. “I want you and Ernst to remain in the background unless something goes wrong.”
“If I’m going to do the dive, I’m going to have to ask some questions.”
“Only when the time is right. Until then let me do all the talking.” Speyer was grim-faced. “These guys aren’t going to screw around. Their lives are on the line.”
Lane nodded. “And they know it.” His Beretta was holstered under his sweater at the small of his back, the silencer already screwed on the end of the barrel. He had a spare magazine of ammunition in his pocket.
Schaub was waiting with a silenced Heckler & Koch 9mm pistol in the shadows at the head o
f the stairs overlooking the great room. He would act as their final backup should things go really wrong. Gloria had agreed to remain in the master suite at the rear of the house until the meeting was over. In fact, she was no problem because she had gone to bed around ten and had passed out shortly thereafter.
All their ducks were in a row, and yet Lane still felt a deep sense of uneasiness. There was something else going on that was just beyond his ken. He couldn’t shake the sensation of forboding.
Speyer stepped outside to the veranda as the two Russians walked over from their truck. They stopped in mid-stride when they saw him.
“Where are the other two men who were supposed to come with you?” Speyer demanded.
“Your information is old,” the taller, huskier of the two said. They both wore dark trousers and matching jackets, of the kind worn by workmen and truck drivers. “Doronkin and Ranow are no longer in Germany.”
“Where are they?”
“Dead.”
“Do you have the equipment and the documents?” Speyer asked. “Did you bring them with you?”
The taller one nodded toward the other man, who held up a battered leather briefcase. “May we come in and get started?”
The Mercedes panel truck was okay where it was for now. Speyer stepped aside and motioned them forward.
Lane took up a position beside the fireplace where he could keep an eye on the two Russians. They introduced themselves as Vladimir Golanov and Danil Cherny, formerly KGB field officers. They were a scruffy-looking pair, and could have been gangsters out of a thirties American movie with slicked back hair. They sat on the couch. Cherny started to open the briefcase, but Golanov held him off.
“We have the film equipment in the truck, and the engineering diagrams here,” he told Speyer. He glanced at Lane, but he didn’t appear to be nervous, just cautious. “First I would like to see the money.”
“Half tonight, the remainder tomorrow after we recover what we’ve come for,” Speyer said.
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