The Germans are a very law-abiding people—” “And you’re a jerk, Mr.
Thorpe,” Anne cut in angrily. “A stuffy, conceited little jerk. If anything happens to my daughter, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
“Now really, Mrs. Stewart. I can see that you’re very upset, but—”
Anne stormed out, slamming the ten-foot-high oak door to his office so hard it shook the paintings on the wall and rattled the tray stacked with empty coffee cups and saucers sitting on his secretary’s desk.
Out on the street once more, Anne glanced around her, not really seeing anything. She felt panicked and helpless. What was she going to do?
Dalton Stewart raced northward in the BMW, his mind churning.
He tried to order his thoughts calmly, rationally. He had to get Genny back. Nothing else mattered.
He looked down the highway. A big trailer truck had moved out into the passing lane and pulled abreast of the car in front of it. Now it was moving along beside the car. At 125 mph, Stewart was rapidly closing in on the truck. He slowed and flashed the high beams of his headlights several times, to no avail. He slowed further and hit the horn with his fist. The truck, now only a few hundred feet in front of him, still refused to move out of the left lane. It continued to stay precisely abreast of the sedan in the right lane. Stewart looked at the speedometer: his speed had fallen to about 85 mph.
Stewart swung into the right lane and flashed at the automobile, a black Audi. The Audi also ignored him. He swung back into the left lane and looked in the rearview mirror. Another truck-also a semi—was coming up in the right lane. A third truck moved out from behind that one to pass it.
In a few seconds the two trucks behind him had closed the gap.
The one in the right lane was now traveling alongside him. The other one was directly in back of him, practically riding on his tail.
The truck behind kept closing in. All he could see in his rearview mirror was the massive steel grille of the vehicle’s radiator.
He accelerated until he was a car length from the back bumper of the truck ahead of him. The truck behind closed right in on him, moving up just inches from his bumper. The rear end of the truck in front was now hanging right over his hood. On his right, the third truck presented a solid wall of white corrugated steel.
Four huge tires on the twin rear axles were rolling furiously along the roadway three or four feet from the side of his car. On his left, the median divider pitched down sharply and then up again at an even steeper angle, to meet the lanes on the other side.
The truck behind nudged his tail. The BMW bounded forward and bounced against the front truck’s bumper.
Stewart’s hands squeezed the steering wheel. His foot was frozen in place on the gas pedal. There was no room to maneuver.
Even the slightest change in speed would bring disaster.
But if he did nothing, they’d crush him.
“Hello? Alexandra Tate?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Paul Elder. I understand that you’re a close friend of Anne Stewart’s.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, this is a little embarrassing, I’m afraid—” “Oh, don’t worry.
I love to hear embarrassing stuff.”
“Well, I’m worried about Anne. I have no right to be worried about her, but I am….”
Bored and anxious, Genny prowled around the small bedroom and bath that made up her prison. She found an old-fashioned men’s razor on top of the medicine chest in the bathroom. It had been there a long time, and the blade had rusted away.
Genny pushed the bed a couple of feet to the side and crouched down beside it. The ancient floor showed signs of dry rot. Near the wall, one of the bed’s iron legs had, over time, worn a substantial depression in one of the boards. Using the flat corner of the razor to saw away part of the edge of the board, Genny was able to get underneath with her fingers and pry up a six-inch-long fragment of one plank. It immediately disintegrated into dusty, flaking pieces.
Genny had expected that as soon as the floor plank had come loose, she would be able to look right down to the floor below.
She was disappointed to discover that beneath that board was another one.
She jammed the handle end of the razor down into the wood of the subfloor. It was punky and soft. Soon she was able to punch the handle completely through.
For half an hour she worked furiously, pulling up more pieces of rotted floor planking until she had removed a ragged, roughly rectangular section about a foot wide and a foot and a half long.
That left the subfloor. The entire surface that she had exposed felt rotted and soft, but the wood was thicker than the floor planks, and she couldn’t get her finger around the edges to pry up on them.
She stood up and jumped on the spot. It sagged, but nothing gave way.
She jumped half a dozen times, but the subfloor held.
She stopped and listened. She was afraid someone might have heard her jumping. After a few minutes, she decided that no one was coming to investigate.
She moved the bed so that one side of it lined up with the edge of the rectangle of exposed subflooring, then climbed up on the mattress. She focused on the spot, twenty inches below her feet, took a big breath, and jumped.
Both heels struck the spot together. The wood gave way with a splintering crack, and Genny disappeared through the floor.
Anne spent most of the afternoon at a Munich police station.
At first everyone appeared eager to help. But there was a language problem. The only individual who spoke English was a middle-aged desk sergeant. He ushered her into his cubicle of an office, ordered her some coffee, and listened attentively, staring alternately at her face and the front of her blouse, as she poured out her story.
When she finished, she discovered that the man’s understanding of what she had just told him was hopelessly garbled. He seemed to think that her husband and the Baroness von Hauser had run off together and taken Genny with them in some kind of transatlantic custody battle. Anne tried repeatedly to explain, but the sergeant, whose name was Ottmar Klempe, just couldn’t seem to get it straight. And he was becoming angry and impatient with her, because he thought she was questioning his ability to understand English.
When he began to perceive that she was accusing the Baroness von Hauser of kidnapping her child, he wagged an admonishing finger at her. He leaned forward across his narrow metal desk and addressed her in an ominous tone. “Der Baroness iss fery powerful. Fery, fery powerful.
You should not say about her such sings.”
Anne walked out of Klempe’s cubbyhole and returned to the front desk.
She demanded to see the chief of the Munich Police Department, or whoever was in overall authority.
382
l, Heidi, the young woman at the front desk, was no longer eager to help. She was annoyed that Anne couldn’t speak German. She also didn’t like her persistence. She demanded to see Anne’s pass port again, and this time she held on to it.
Klempe, meanwhile, had emerged from his cubicle and was regaling everyone behind the waist-high, glass-topped barricade that separated the department’s working area from the public lobby with his version of Anne’s story. Several employees began making loud comments; others stared at her. Anne understood very little, but it was obvious that they were discussing the merits of her charges.
She sat on one of the red-and-blue plastic chairs arranged along the wall, determined to stay until someone agreed to do something. Ten minutes later, Klempe, in an almost comically officious tone, relayed the news to her that the chief would indeed see her, but she might have to wait. He was very busy.
She said she’d wait.
The attention of the station switched away from her as completely as if she had walked out the door. She was a problem, and someone higher up had just taken her off their hands.
Anne sat on the hard red plastic chair for over an hour
, watching the riffraff of the Munich streets—prostitutes, pimps, pushers, and an occasional drunk-and-disorderly—parade past her on the way to an arraignment or a lockup. Lawyers and family and friends of the arrested filled the chairs around her, smoking and talking in voices amplified by the tile walls around them.
The frustration of not being able to communicate added greatly to Anne’s panic. She feared that she would just go berserk and start screaming at people if the chief didn’t send for her soon.
At five P.M. a woman in civilian clothes came to the gate in the barrier and called out Anne’s name. Anne jumped up and ran over, tears of relief in her eyes.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting so long,” the woman said in almost accentless English. “The chief has been very busy. My name is Marthe, by the way.”
Anne shook the woman’s hand. “I’m so glad you speak English.
I’ve felt so lost and alone ever since this happened.”
“I understand very well. I’m sorry.” She escorted Anne down along a corridor to the back of the building, and then into an elevator. She pressed the button for the top floor.
“Does the chief—what is his name?”
“Werner Schmidt. Chief Werner Schmidt.”
“Does Chief Schmidt speak English?”
“Yes, he does. Better even than me.”
“Thank God for that.”
From the elevator bank on the top floor, Martha ushered Anne down another long corridor. This one had plush carpeting, and the noise level was far quieter than below.
Marthe showed her into the chief’s office and settled her in a seat next to a big, dark wooden desk. There she waited another ten minutes before Chief Schmidt appeared. He was a tall man with dark hair, a walrus mustache, and a distinct no-nonsense air about him.
Anne’s passport was on his desk. He picked it up, glanced at it, then handed it to her.
“I am sorry for the long wait, Mrs. Stewart. Please tell me your problem.” His voice was neither hostile nor friendly. It was neutral, withholding judgment.
“I arrived here this morning from New York. I was supposed to meet my husband, Dalton Stewart, at the airport. He has an office here in Munich. My daughter was supposed to be with him.
He never showed up. I was paged at the airport by Baroness von Hauser.
I assume you know who she is?”
Schmidt nodded. He had an elbow up on his desk and was cradling his head delicately in his hand—thumb under chin, forefinger against cheek—giving her his full attention.
“She told me that she had my daughter. How she got her I don’t know.
She wants information from me. I agreed to give it to her if she’d bring my daughter to me, but she insists I go to her place—a castle somewhere in the country. I’ve never seen it.
I’m afraid to do that. I don’t trust the woman. I’m at the end of my rope to know what to do—” Schmidt interrupted. “Do you know what has become of your husband ? ” “No. The baroness said he was in an accident. Do you know?”
Schmidt shook his head no. “Do you have the information the baroness wanted?”
“Yes.” Anne removed the black plastic RCD from her handbag and handed it to Schmidt. She explained what it contained.
Schmidt turned the cartridge over in his hand, then gave it back.
He didn’t seem especially interested in it.
“Mrs. Stewart,” he said in a low voice. “Before you came in, I took it upon myself to telephone the baroness, so that I would be better prepared to talk to you. Would you like to hear what she told me?”
Anne met the chief’s dispassionate gaze with a look of surprise.
“Of course.”
“Very well.” Schmidt pulled a small notebook from his pocket, opened it, glanced at a page, and looked up at Anne. “She did indeed admit to me that she has your daughter—Genny, is that her name?—yes. She has Genny with her. She explained to me that the girl was brought to her estate—Schloss Vogel—by her father, yesterday. He left Schloss Vogel this morning to pick you up at the airport and bring you back to the estate. When it was apparent that he had not arrived to pick you up, the baroness called the airport and had you paged. When you called her, she told you that Genny was safe with her, but that she didn’t know what had become of your husband. She offered to send someone to the airport to pick you up, but you refused. Instead you insisted that she bring a large sum of money to the airport before you would give her this computer cartridge. The cartridge, as she explained it to me, is the property of a joint venture between her and your husband. You’re now separated from your husband?”
“Yes, but—” “The baroness told me that you stole this cartridge from your husband’s office in New York, because you knew it was valuable, and wished to force your estranged husband and the baroness to pay a ransom for its return. She said your motive for this was twofold: first, to get money, of course; second, to get revenge on both her and your husband.
The baroness and Mr. Stewart are to be married, as I understand it, pending his divorce from you.
And she did also warn me that you might claim that she was kidnapping your daughter. If you want your daughter, she informed me, all you have to do is go to Schloss Vogel, give the baroness the cartridge, and pick up your child.”
The chief tucked the notebook back in his suit pocket and smiled patronizingly at Anne. “Now, doesn’t it sound to you, Mrs. Stewart, that what the baroness told me is probably the truth ? ” Anne just stared at the man. She could no longer summon the kind of outraged anger she had unleashed against the official at the American embassy.
She felt truly alone and abandoned.
For an instant Stewart was tempted to do nothing, to accept the fate offered him. Let the damned murder run its course. Solve all his problems. Foot steady on the gas pedal, holding the speed at 85 mph; hand steady on the wheel, straight ahead. Do nothing, and let it all come to an end in the next few seconds.
But he had to get his daughter back.
The thought of Genny made him want to weep. He was so proud of that child. So intensely proud. And he had never really been proud of anything before.
Genny was valuable beyond all the money in the world. She was a new kind of human. Homo sapiens rex—smarter, stronger, and healthier than anything the world had ever seen. No one yet knew her potential. But what was truly important was that she was his child, his only child.
He’d get her back. Whatever he had to do, he’d get her back. Nothing would stop him.
He sensed the roadway curving slightly to the right. The back end of the truck in front was no longer parallel to his windshield, but bending slightly, opening a few more inches of room on his left side.
It had to be now, before they were through the turn.
He cranked the wheel sharply left.
The BMW lurched out of its three-walled moving prison with a high-pitched squeal of tires and plunged down the bank of the median divider.
Stewart straightened the steering wheel instantly and began applying the brakes. The surface was rough grass, and the car bucked furiously as it shot diagonally down toward a concrete drainage ditch at the bottom of the divider.
The left front tire slammed into the ditch. The car swerved, throwing the back left tire into the ditch as well.
Trapped in the concrete channel, the BMW continued forward, tilted over at a forty-five-degree angle. The car’s undercarriage scraped along the near edge of the ditch with a shower of sparks and a shriek of tearing metal.
Directly ahead the ditch terminated in a concrete catch basin.
Stewart clutched the wheel and hit the brake pedal with all his strength. The pedal slammed against the floorboard with no resistance.
The brake lines were severed.
Stewart yanked the emergency brake. The BMW’s momentum slowed.
Stewart pulled harder. The emergency brake line parted and the handle7
its purchase lost, flew backwards in his hand.
; Stewart jammed the shift lever into first gear. The car’s momentum slowed further, but not enough to stop short of the catch basin. The left front edge of the bumper hit the concrete first and crushed against the left front tire. The bottom of the radiator struck next, and the car’s front end, designed to give way under high impact, collapsed back against the reinforced frame of the passenger compartment.
Amidst the buckling and rending of metal and a rain of thousands of pellets of safety glass, the BMW came at last to a halt, tilted steeply on its left side.
The safety bag deployed, slapping back hard against Stewart’s face and chest, and then deflated. Black smoke billowed from the accordioned remains of the engine compartment.
Stewart was shaken up but conscious. He pulled on the door handle.
The catch released, but the door wouldn’t open; it was wedged against the concrete side of the drainage ditch. He pressed the button to open the window, but the window didn’t move. He tried the other windows.
None worked.
He grabbed the hand hold over the passenger-side door and pulled himself across the front seat. He braced his feet against the drivers side door and pulled on the passenger side door latch.
The latch clicked open. He pushed the door outward, but it was tilted up at such a sharp angle it refused to stay open. He braced one foot on the side of the driver’s headrest and pushed himself about a foot closer to the passenger door, but he still couldn’t hold the door open and climb out at the same time.
Stewart could now smell gasoline mixed with the acidic, choking stench of the black smoke.
Genny pulled herself up to her hands and knees and looked around. She had landed on her feet and then fallen forward and banged her head and the heels of her palms. She felt dazed, but after she stood up her head cleared and she knew she wasn’t badly hurt.
It was quite dark. What light there was seemed to come from far above.
She looked up and saw the small hole in the floor she had fallen through. It was far out of her reach.
Gradually her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She turned around, trying to determine where she was. There were walls on either side of her. They were so close that she could touch them with her elbows.
Tom Hyman Page 37
