Puzzle People (9781613280126)

by Peterson, Doug

  Elsa put both hands on her gun and moved into a slightly wider stance, as if readying to fire. The steady muzzle was now firmly in Kurt’s direction. Annie felt as though she was going to throw up. She very nearly did.

  “You’re not a murderer, Frau Fleischer,” Kurt said, and Annie noticed he had moved forward to the edge of the couch. “You’re not a killer.”

  “That’s not what you said yesterday.”

  Again, confusion. When they talked about Elsa’s murder of Stefan Hansel the day before, they had been outside. There could only be one way that Elsa heard their conversation. Someone had planted bugs on them—on their bodies. But how could that be done without them noticing?

  Kurt was clearly thinking the same thing. “How could you possibly know what we said yesterday—outside?” he said.

  Elsa didn’t answer. The look on her face transformed from fear to sadness. Her eyelids drooped, and her gaze seemed to lose focus.

  “I don’t want to do this, but I have to,” she said. “You shouldn’t have played detective.”

  Annie sensed that those words were directed at her, and for good reason. She was the one who played at being a detective, not Kurt. This was her doing. The result of her choices. Jack had died because of her decision to go to the yard and garden store that morning. Now Kurt was going to die because of her choices.

  “They’re using you, Frau Fleischer,” Kurt said. “Don’t you see? They’re sending you to do this dirty work. They’re always making you do the dirty work. They’ve been using you for most of your life.”

  “No one sent me.”

  “Where is he? Where is Herr Adler right now? He sent you here to shoot us, didn’t he?”

  “This was my idea!”

  “I understand,” Kurt said. “I understand that Herr Adler is probably listening in right now, making sure you do the job. But he’s probably going to put a bullet in your head next. You know I’m right.”

  Annie noticed that Elsa’s eyes flickered downward at the mention of Herr Adler—in the direction of Annie’s purse. Kurt noticed it as well.

  “Where is the bug? Is it in Annie’s purse? Ingenious. It followed us around wherever we went.”

  “Idiots,” Elsa said. “It was Frau O’Shea’s cell phone. They rigged it to be a roving bug.”

  Annie’s mouth opened in soundless shock. The idea of her own cell phone acting as a bug, sucking in every word, was a stab to the gut. They could listen to everything she and Kurt discussed, the most intimate of moments. Her mind flitted back to the day that her phone went missing. Was that when her phone was turned into a listening device?

  “Frau Fleischer, I know how you feel,” Kurt said. Soothing tone, slow delivery, stretching out the sentences, buying time.

  “You have no idea.”

  “I do. They used me too. Didn’t you hear that over our bug? They used me to betray my own mother and father. So I know exactly how you feel.”

  Elsa’s gun hand began to shake more visibly, as if low-voltage electricity was coursing through it. She blew away a strand of blonde hair that drooped across her face.

  “That doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “You were young when they used you. You were able to start again. If I lose everything now—my family, my job—it’s over.”

  “That’s not true,” Kurt said. And as he spoke, his right hand drifted down to the couch and slowly moved backward to where the back of the couch met the cushions.

  “Your husband is a good man, Frau Fleischer,” he said. “He would understand that it wasn’t your fault. Isn’t he a good man?”

  “Leave my husband out of this.”

  “But he’s a forgiving man. He will know you had no choice but to be an informer. My father forgave me. He knew I didn’t have a choice. He knew I was just a boy.”

  Kurt’s voice began to crack. The words had a visible effect on Elsa. It was obvious there was true emotion in Kurt’s voice. It wasn’t just a put-on. Her aim began to waver. She lowered the gun just a fraction.

  “I betrayed my parents. They went to prison because of me.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Annie saw a tear slide down Kurt’s face. She too began to well up, and it appeared that Elsa’s eyes were pooling with tears as well. Elsa blinked away the moisture. She lowered the gun another few inches. Her hands continued to tremble.

  “My father forgave me. Your husband will forgive you. You can start fresh with him.”

  “But the country will not forgive. Schwarz never acted again when he was uncovered as a Stasi informer. He tried stepping up onstage, but he was whistled off every time. And Fischer never wrote again. Readers piled copies of her books on the sidewalk in front of her door.”

  Annie wondered what might happen if Elsa was exposed. Would her fans heap piles of clothes at her doorstep?

  “I can’t take that chance,” Elsa said.

  The ambivalence in her eyes suddenly evaporated, and she raised the gun again. There was renewed vigor in her movements.

  “You know too much. And what you know will send me to prison. I’m sorry, but I have no choice. I have to do this. Say a final prayer, if you will, because I’m going to—”

  Kurt’s right hand shot out from behind his back with gun-slinger speed. He had something in his hand, something gray, and he hurled it with full force. A direct hit. It was a piece of concrete, the piece of the Wall they had left on the couch. The chunk of the Wall hit Elsa in the forehead with a crack, and her entire body was flung backward, as if blown back by an explosion, and she went sprawling onto the floor. Her gun flew out of her hand and smacked the wall, and Annie noticed that a narrow rill of blood was streaming out of her forehead, like a spring of red water. Elsa didn’t move a muscle.

  “Is she dead?” Annie knelt down beside her body, but Kurt pulled her back to her feet.

  “No time!” He locked the apartment door, snatched up the gun, and searched his pockets for his cell phone to call the police. Coming up empty, he realized he didn’t have time to hunt for the phone because the knob of the apartment door had begun to twist. Someone was trying to get in. Someone wanted to finish the job that Elsa had failed to carry out.

  Annie screamed, and Kurt grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward the bedroom. Not a second to spare. As he shoved a dresser against the bedroom door, Annie heard the apartment door splintering. The attacker had broken through and was charging the bedroom door, throwing his full weight against it. The fortification held as the attacker hurled himself against the door again and again—but it wouldn’t keep him out for long. Annie was busy at the window, raising it high and bringing in the rain, which fell in sheets while the wind whipped at the curtains. Kurt’s apartment was on the second floor—fortunately, no higher—but it was still a risky jump, a good way to break bones or sprain ankles. They had no other choice.

  “Go, go, go!”

  Annie felt the rain pelting her legs as she climbed feetfirst, on her belly, out the window. She dangled down from the ledge, reducing the fall as much as possible, and then let go. She landed in a clump of bushes, which scratched her arms and her face, but nothing was broken or sprained. Her soggy dress was ripped as she extricated herself from the bushes. Kurt came tumbling down after her. She helped him to his feet and noticed the shadow of a man coming around the corner. Was it a neighbor coming to help?

  The man raised his arm in shooting position. This was no good neighbor. This was backup—a large, lumbering man. How many were there?

  “Run!” Kurt propelled Annie forward, and she heard the spurt of a muffled shot. He stopped to fire back with Elsa’s gun. He didn’t hit the target, but the shot sent their attacker ducking into a passageway leading to an adjoining courtyard. Then they dashed across the dark courtyard to the only protection in sight. The watchtower. This squat, concrete sentinel was their only chance of survival.

  42

  Berlin

  September 2003

  Kurt took Annie’s hand and tugged her through the
torrential rain to a cluster of low hedges encircling the base of the watch-tower. Within moments, they were drenched, and Annie’s clothes clung to her heavily. It was like standing under a waterfall; water streamed down her hair and face, and she had to swipe soggy strands out of her eyes. The rumble of thunder and the hiss of rain made it difficult to determine if someone was approaching. It might even make it difficult to hear the muffled report of a suppressor-equipped handgun. Annie was afraid they could be killed at any moment without a warning, without a sound.

  “Stay low while I open the watchtower door.”

  Crouching behind the hedges, Kurt pulled out his set of keys and fumbled in the dark for the right one. Because he occasionally gave tours of the watchtower, he had his own key, but finding it in the pitch-dark in a downpour with a gun in one hand while a killer lurked only a stone’s throw away, somewhere in the courtyard, was no easy feat. Annie looked around anxiously, expecting a killer to step out of the sheet of rain and blow them away at any moment. If they could just get inside the watchtower, they would be in good position. The watchtower was a solid fortress, and it could become their personal panic room.

  The only windows of the watchtower were at the top of the concrete structure—a single row of four windows on each side where guards once scanned the border with binoculars. Annie stared up at these windows, and when lightning lit up the entire courtyard, she gasped in horror. There was a face at the glass—peering out from the watchtower window.

  “Wait! There’s someone up there!” she shouted.

  “It’s just a mannequin,” Kurt yelled through the noise of the rain, still looking for the right key.

  Another flash of lightning revealed that Kurt was right. It was a mannequin of a border guard at the window—a bloodless, life-sized doll that made the watchtower appear all the more ominous.

  Annie thought she heard a twig snap, and then there was a sudden burst of suppressed gunfire, and she heard the whine of a bullet passing overhead. Kurt popped up from behind the hedge and fired back wildly into the dark. He probably didn’t expect to hit anything; he just needed to drive back their attacker, anything to buy them a little time.

  While he went back to fumbling with the keys, Annie poked her head above the hedge. There were at least two men out to kill them, maybe more. She looked off to her left in the direction of the apartment building that faced Kurt’s building, and she saw a shadow moving through the rain, a hulking shadow. Well over six feet tall.

  “Kurt,” she said. “To the left.”

  Kurt aimed where Annie was pointing, and fired. The shadow didn’t fall, but the gunshot drove it into hiding around the corner of the apartment building. Quickly, quickly, Kurt jangled his keys and finally found the right one.

  “Stay here,” he said sharply and then hurdled up onto the concrete platform at the base of the watchtower. A gunshot went off, and a bullet hit the concrete wall of the watchtower just above his head. The key was in the lock, and Kurt threw the door open.

  “Now!” he shouted to Annie.

  She leaped from the bushes and crawled onto the concrete platform, trying to stay as low as possible while still scurrying forward. She moved into a crouch as another gunshot went off and lightning lit up the courtyard. It might have been her imagination, but she thought the bullet whizzed through the spot where she had been only seconds before. Thunder cracked, a loud snapping sound like a breaking branch, no longer a drawn-out rumble.

  Inside the watchtower, Annie slipped on her wet shoes and nearly fell, while Kurt whirled around and started to pull the door shut. But before he could get the steel door closed, one of their attackers came charging out of the dark. He was a huge man, and he wedged himself in the doorway. The man’s hand was through the door. His gun hand. Annie threw herself to the side as the gun went off, a startling burst only a foot away. She didn’t feel pain, didn’t think she had been hit. She felt her clothes for blood, but she was soaked through and through and would not be able to tell blood from rainwater in the dark.

  Kurt smashed the palm of his hand against the big man’s face, and she heard the crack of cartilage as the man’s nose flattened out like putty and blood erupted from it. The attacker howled in pain as his gun dropped from his hand. Annie pounced on the gun, and the man turned to retreat. As he leaped from the concrete platform, Kurt shot him in midair, and he let out another howl before hitting the wet ground with a splash.

  Pulling the steel door shut and throwing the lock, Kurt noticed the gun in Annie’s hand. He was still armed with Elsa’s weapon.

  “Do you know how to use that?”

  “No!”

  “I’ll show you, but first—up!” Kurt turned toward the steep metal stairs leading to the second floor.

  He let Annie go first, and she grabbed the metal handrails and yanked herself up. With her wet shoes and wet hands, she slipped and nearly fell back on top of Kurt, but he propped her up from below.

  Another gunshot. Someone was shooting away at the steel door’s lock.

  “Hurry, hurry!”

  Two more gunshots, followed by thunder.

  Kurt shoved her from behind through the narrow opening into the second floor, and she threw herself onto the concrete. Then Kurt scrambled through and dropped to his belly, scooting to the edge of the square opening and peering down to the first floor. They were both breathing heavily. Annie crawled to his side, the gun still in her right hand. A gun! It felt so odd holding a real weapon. She had never shot one in her life. She stared at the dark steel weapon, as if her hand had grown a strange appendage.

  “How do I use this?”

  “Align the front and rear sights. Then squeeze the trigger. Don’t pull it wildly, or it will throw off your aim.”

  She was shaking involuntarily, partly from the cold and her wet clothes, but mostly from fear. Her teeth chattered.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll be safe up here. We have the high ground,” Kurt said. “And surely a neighbor has alerted the police. They’ll be here soon.”

  Annie wasn’t so sure about that. In the storm, the sound of guns equipped with silencers blended in with the natural noise. Lightning flashed and thunder clapped, and Annie stared down at the entrance. With two more shots, the lock had been blown away. Slowly, the steel door below opened outward, but they didn’t see anyone. It was as if an invisible entity was easing the door open, which squeaked on its hinges. Their attacker was there, just on the other side of the steel door, slowly pulling it open.

  With the door gaping wide, the hiss of the rain amplified, and they could see the sheets lit up by a burst of lighting. She heard the rustle of bushes but still didn’t see anyone.

  Kurt aimed his gun at the open door below, waiting for the attacker to suddenly appear. Annie aimed her gun as well, although she had no idea what she was doing. She hated the idea of killing someone. But she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want Kurt to die.

  They waited. Still no movement outside. The door hung open, and the rain continued to hiss.

  Then a face, concealed in shadow, appeared for just a moment, and a gun went off, a suppressed burst, and Annie heard the ping of a bullet hitting metal. A bullet had hit the metal steps only a foot beneath their faces.

  Kurt fired back, and the noise deafened Annie, despite the silencer on the gun. One second later, a body catapulted through the open door and inside the watchtower, going by so quickly that she barely saw it. Kurt shot again, but she didn’t see how he could have hit the fast-moving target.

  Kurt drew away from the opening, and he pulled her with him.

  “Do you think you got him?” she asked under her breath.

  “Don’t think so. Up.”

  The watchtower had three floors, so Annie scrambled up the next metal ladder while Kurt guarded the second-floor opening. Her entire body tingled with tension and panic. Her wet clothes weighed her down, and she felt as though she was going to faint. Kurt pushed from below, and she hit her head on the passageway as she dragged he
rself into the third floor. As she did, her gun slipped out of her wet hand and skittered into a corner. On her hands and knees, Annie felt around for the gun, but it was lost in the shadows. She looked up, and there, standing on the opposite side of the opening to the third floor, was the mannequin of a border soldier, wearing an East German helmet. The mannequin peered out of the small square windows that extended across the entire wall. She almost expected it to come alive and pull out a weapon of its own.

  She was jolted by more gunfire. As Kurt followed her up the staircase, their attacker started shooting from the first floor, and Kurt returned fire.

  Kurt let out a groan and staggered through the opening, clutching his leg and falling onto his back in the dark. Lightning lit up the room like daylight, and Annie could see he was in agony.

  “Where have you been hit?”

  “My calf.” He rolled on the floor, clutching his leg, blood on his fingers. Annie heard the sound of footsteps on metal. Their attacker was taking advantage of Kurt’s injury to scramble from the first floor to the second. Groaning, Kurt leaned onto his side and fired down through the opening. Multiple gunshots followed, like thunder bottled up inside the watchtower. The noise was deafening. Annie’s ears began ringing, transforming all other sounds to an echoing, underwater tone.

  Then she heard a clicking sound, a horrible sound. It was the click of an empty gun cartridge. Kurt’s gun.

  “Quick! Give me your gun!” he shouted, holding out his hand and expecting her to put a backup weapon in his palm—as if he was a doctor expecting a nurse to hand him a scalpel.

  But Annie had nothing to give him. Her gun was somewhere in the dark, and down below, they heard movement. Then they saw movement. The attacker hurtled up the metal stairs to the third floor. Their floor. The last floor. There was nowhere else to go, and they had no weapons.

  43

  Berlin

  September 2003

  The attacker fired as he scampered up the stairs, as agile as an ape, and the bullet ricocheted off the third-floor walls. In close quarters, ricochets could be deadly.