by Dale Brown
“Hmph,” said Chafetz. Although he sounded unconvinced, he also seemed to be calculating the benefits.
“Why not just put the unit in an F–22?” asked Wallace. “If I might play devil’s advocate.”
“That’s doable,” said Breanna. “Though we would have to completely gut and rebuild the plane.” She shrugged. “The Office of Technology doesn’t own any of those, and the subcontractor wasn’t in a position to commandeer one.”
That drew a few laughs.
“This looks like just a backdoor way of getting the Tigershark into the budget,” said Admiral Chafetz.
“It is one argument for it,” admitted Breanna. “No one has ruled out the plane. They just weren’t ready to fund it.”
“I’d like to see it make headway in this Congress,” said Wallace with disgust. Then he glanced at Breanna. “Present company and their relatives excepted.”
“I haven’t spoken to Senator Stockard at all about this,” said Breanna hastily.
“Well you should,” said Admiral Garvey. “Because it’s a hell of an idea. When is the demonstration again?”
6
Berlin
During his relatively short career with the CIA, Nuri Lupo had worked with a variety of foreign agencies, sometimes officially, sometimes unofficially. He’d had varying degrees of success and cooperation, but by far his worst experiences had come when working with the FBI, which he’d had to do three times.
The Berlin assignment made four. The Bureau could not be bypassed for a number of reasons, all of them political.
Actually the most important wasn’t political at all: Reid had told him to work with the Bureau. Period.
“To the extent possible,” said Reid. “Which means you will, at a minimum, make contact. Before you arrive. If not sooner.”
FBI agents were, in Nuri’s experience, among the most uncooperative species on the planet, at least when it came to dealing with the CIA. The two agencies were natural rivals, partly because of their overlapping missions in national security and espionage. But sibling rivalry wasn’t the only cause of conflict. G-men—and -women—regarded “spy” as an occupation somewhere lower than journalist and politician. From the Bureau’s perspective, the CIA sullied every American by its mere existence.
It was also no doubt galling that Agency field officers had expense accounts several times larger than FBI agents.
Nuri tried to use the expense account to his advantage, but had to use all of his persuasive skills merely to get the FBI agent, a middle-aged woman whose gray pantsuit matched her demeanor, to have breakfast with him as soon as he arrived in the city.
“I’ve already had breakfast,” insisted Elise Gregor as they sat down in the small café a short distance from the airport. “And I don’t want any more coffee.”
“Have a decaf,” said Nuri, trying his best to be affable.
“Just tell me what you want.”
“I just need background,” said Nuri. He stopped speaking as the waiter came over, switching to German to order.
“Eggs with toast, American style,” said the waiter in English far superior to Nuri’s German.
“That’s it,” said Nuri.
The putdown was regarded as some sort of triumph by Gregor, who practically beamed as she told the waiter in German that she would have a small orange juice. Nuri considered whether he ought just to leave, but the FBI might be of some use at some point in the investigation, and closing the door now didn’t make sense.
Well, maybe it did. How much help could they possibly be?
“German’s not one of your languages, is it?” Gregor asked as the waiter left.
“I can speak a little.”
“Very little.”
I’d like to see you handle Arabic, thought Nuri. Or Farsi. Or maybe a subdialect of Swahili.
“So what do you want?” said Gregor. “Why are you here?”
“I want to talk to the investigator on the Helmut Dalitz murder case.”
“Dalitz? The banker?”
“Businessman. Do you have any information?”
She made a face. “That’s too local for us to get involved in.”
“You have nothing?” asked Nuri, surprised. The FBI had been briefed, to some degree at least, on the Wolves and the suspected connection to the murder. Was Gregor out of the loop? Or playing coy?
Coy. The word evoked images of sex kittens… a nauseating concept when connected with the woman sitting across from him.
“Why is the Agency interested?” Gregor asked.
“They don’t tell me everything,” said Nuri, deciding he could be just as hard to deal with as Gregor. “They sent me here to see what was going on.”
“They didn’t tell you why?”
“I think it has to do with money laundering,” said Nuri.
“That’s an FBI area of interest.” Gregor’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing like that has come up.”
“So you are following the case?”
“From a distance,” she said. “We’re somewhat interested—not involved.”
The orange juice and coffee arrived. Nuri took a sip of the coffee. It was surprisingly weak.
“I don’t see where he could have been laundering money,” said Gregor. “He was a respected businessman.”
“Yeah, it’s probably a total waste of time. That’s the sort of crap they send me on these days,” said Nuri.
Gregor frowned. “This is because of the connection to the Wolves, right?”
“Well, I—”
“All right. Let’s go,” she said, rising.
“But—”
“I have other things to do today,” she told him. “If you’re coming, come. And you better leave the waiter a good tip. They really like me here.”
The Berlin detective heading the investigation into Dalitz’s murder was a thirty-something woman who spoke English with a pronounced British accent. She was also among the most beautiful women Nuri had ever met.
She was so pretty, in fact, that if she and Gregor were combined and averaged out, the result would still be among the top ten or so models in the world. Nuri felt his head flush just meeting her; her handshake—firm, not too eager but not unfriendly—weakened his knees.
“I will be very happy to tell you what we know,” Frau Gerste said, leading them to her office in the upstairs of the municipal building. She worked for the national police even though her office was in the local police station; Nuri couldn’t quite grasp the relationship between the local, state, and national police agencies but decided it was irrelevant for now.
“I am afraid that it is not much,” Gerste continued, taking a seat behind her desk. This was unfortunate; it removed half of her body from view. “What we have does not seem to lead to much that is usable.”
Frau Gerste recounted the details of the crime, which had happened in a relatively popular part of Berlin, in an area that had been under communist control before the Wall came down. There had been few people on the street at the time, however, and apparently the assassin and any assistants had gotten away without being seen.
“We would believe he was waiting somewhere outside,” said Frau Gerste. “There are video cameras, but several blind spots. So he must have studied the area.”
“It was a professional job,” said Nuri.
“Very. The bullet was significant—undetectable by metal detectors,” said Gerste. “We imagine this was because the killer was in the music hall with him, or thought he might be. There were detectors at the door. His weapon, I assume, would have been undetectable as well. Very unusual.”
“Yes.”
“From what I understand,” she said, “the bullet is similar to one used in another murder, this one political. Do you have details on that?”
Nuri shook his head, trying not to make it too obvious that he was lying. It was terrible to lie to beautiful women.
“I have heard that there was an organization responsible for the political murder.” Frau Ge
rste smiled—it was as if the sun had come out after a winter’s worth of cloudy days. “Interpol’s information is very limited. A code name, the Wolves. That is why your interest, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” said Nuri.
“Of course a professional committed the crime,” said Frau Gerste. “But why? Helmut Dalitz did have some enemies, but hiring someone to murder him?”
“You don’t buy the mafia connection?” said Nuri.
She made a face. “Revenge for a heart attack? Would you commit murder for a heart attack?”
“Well, I wouldn’t commit murder,” said Nuri.
“If you were the mafia, would you hire another killer?”
“If they owed me money or a favor,” said Nuri.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Frau Gerste preferred a more local motive—a jilted lover, perhaps, though the investigation had not produced one. There were rumors that the victim saw prostitutes and had a gay lover.
Gregor nodded vigorously as Frau Gerste proffered the theories—none of which had any firm evidence to back them up. But they would be more acceptable to a German, thought Nuri; they were signs of personal disorder, which would explain the external disorder of murder.
“Could the murderer have been working with someone on the inside?” asked Gregor.
“The inside?”
“Someone who was part of his business. Who would know where the video cameras were and the security arrangements. His daughter? I heard he was with his daughter and her boyfriend.”
“The daughter was there. The boyfriend is no longer a boyfriend. We did check that possibility,” said Frau Gerste, nodding approvingly. “That is something we continue to explore. Jealousy from the boyfriend. Perhaps he wanted a fortune.”
The look in Frau Gerste’s eyes—approval—would have melted Nuri on the spot had it been directed at him. It had a distinctly sexual tinge to it.
Aimed at Gregor, it seemed almost immoral, even sacrilegious. Nuri felt his stomach turning, just a little.
“Of course, with a little bit of planning, then it would be possible to compute the lines of sight at the square,” said Frau Gerste. “No sources would be necessary.”
“Maybe he is on the tape from a few days before,” suggested Nuri, finally finding his tongue.
“We have thought of that. The tapes are kept for only forty-eight hours. There was nothing overly suspicious in that time.”
Nuri found himself staring at Frau Gerste’s profile. She wore her blond hair in a bob. Ordinarily not a perfect choice, he thought, though in this case she pulled it off.
And her breasts…
She turned suddenly to him.
“So why are two Bureau of Investigations agents interested?” asked Frau Gerste.
She gave him the look. It wasn’t really approval. It was… something more basic. Nuri, blood thumping in his temples, was temporarily tongue-tied.
“He’s not with the Bureau,” said Gregor.
“No?”
“I’m a liaison with State,” said Nuri, preferring not to use the words Central Intelligence Agency if at all possible. “We—there may be a national security connection.”
“National security? Because of the Wolves? Ah. So you believe that?”
He had Frau Gerste’s interest. Maybe he should admit to being with the CIA. Some women liked the excitement it implied.
“These things have to be checked,” said Nuri apologetically. “But we do have a lot of resources. Perhaps they can be of help.”
“What sort of resources?”
“DNA sampling. If you have something from the scene—”
“Nothing. We have our own labs. But we found nothing.”
“Well, if we had access to billing done in the area, we might be able to find a pattern,” offered Nuri.
“Billing?”
“Credit card payments, that sort of thing. Restaurants. See if the place was under surveillance. The person or persons might have bought something in the area. It’d be a long shot.”
“German law makes that difficult to obtain,” said Frau Gerste. Indeed it did, which was why he had to ask; the credit card companies would not simply part with the information, even to their American counterparts. “And that would be a needle in the haystack, I think you say.”
God, she was beautiful, even when she was skeptical. What is it exactly, he wondered. Her blue eyes? They were set perfectly apart. Her nose—not too big, not too small. The lips were a little full, but that only sealed the deal.
Her face was unblemished and, surprisingly given her job, unwrinkled. And her breasts—not large, actually, but high and seemingly firm under her very proper blouse.
“Thank you for your time,” said Gregor, starting to rise.
“You said that someone may have checked the video cameras,” said Nuri. “I’d like to look at them myself. And the funeral. Was there anything unusual about the funeral?”
“Only the flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“The dead roses. It is not clear whether they were deliberate or not.”
“Would you happen to know the shop that sent them?” he asked.
A dozen black, withered roses had been sent to the funeral. The state of the roses wasn’t a matter of poor service—they’d been ordered that way.
Nuri talked Frau Gerste into taking him to the shop to see the owner. He was hoping Gregor would beg off because of her allegedly heavy schedule, but no such luck—she not only came, but insisted on driving. That left him in the back, slowly getting intoxicated on the scent of Frau Gerste’s perfume.
The scent was hard to describe. A kind of exotic lilac thing. Spicy, yet sweet.
Like her, no doubt. He wondered what kind of lingerie she preferred.
“It’s not the strangest order he’s ever had, especially for a funeral,” Frau Gerste translated as they interviewed the owner of the small shop. “One time he had to make a delivery with several mice’s heads. He doesn’t like to do it, but for the extra fee…”
“Can I get a copy of the invoice, or order, or whatever?” asked Nuri.
“I can’t order him to give it,” said Gerste.
“But he could give it to us voluntarily, right?” he asked.
“The laws regarded evidence in court—”
“But they apply to you,” said Nuri. “Not me. And if I then made a copy available to you…”
“I don’t know…”
“If the information came from the FBI,” suggested Gregor, “then it would be usable.”
“Hmmmmph,” said Frau Gerste.
The order had come through an e-mail system. The owner printed it out. Nuri took it, then asked if there was a small office where he could use the phone. He wanted privacy, not the line—he pulled the headset for the MY-PID out and connected to the computer network.
“Good morning, Nuri,” said the computer.
“Working on the personality modules again?” asked Nuri.
“Please repeat request.”
“I need this order tracked.” Nuri read in the particulars. The computer took several seconds before telling him that the order had come from a shop in Naples.
“Any known mafia connection?” asked Nuri.
It was another few seconds before the computer answered. The shop’s owners had been named in two different indictments related to La Costra Nostra.
When Nuri came out of the office, Frau Gerste and Gregor were nodding solemnly as the owner of the shop told them, in German, about the fine points of caring for freshly cut flowers. It was all in the water, he said, and in the angle of the cut.
Nuri would have been content to let the conversation continue—it gave him a good chance to watch Frau Gerste surreptitiously—but Gregor noticed him gawking and abruptly asked him if he’d discovered anything.
“Definitely a mafia connection with the flowers,” he said. “It reinforces the revenge theory.”
“Perhaps,” said Frau Gerste
, sighing just a little.
7
Washington, D.C.
“Senator, I hate to say this, but you’re going to be late for the White House. Again. I know you’re only going in Senator Tompkins’s place, but—”
“I’m on my way, Clarissa.” Senator Jeffrey “Zen” Stockard smiled at his appointments secretary, Clarissa Tomey. “But I have a reputation to maintain.”
“For being late?”
“You got it.”
“They blame me, you know,” said the secretary. “I’m sure they hate me.”
“Broad shoulders,” said Zen, wheeling himself past her desk. “Jason? Where the hell are you?” he said in mock anger. “You’re late. Late again.”
“Uh, Senator, I’m right here, sir,” said Jason Black, who was standing at the door. “I’ve been, uh, waiting.”
“No alibis, Jay. We all know it’s your fault.”
“Um, yes sir.”
Zen laughed. He loved teasing his staff, especially Black, who was only a year removed from college.
“Can I trust you at the White House?” Zen asked as he rolled his wheelchair down the hall. “Coming in with me?”
“Um, uh, yes, Senator. I, uh—my tie’s clean.”
“You like seeing the President, don’t you? Or at least that cute intern they have from the NSC that’s always winking at you when we go over there.”
Zen glanced up at Black, who was turning beet red.
“Hey, Zen,” said Senator Dirks, approaching down the hall. “Got a minute?”
“Damned if I don’t, but take it anyway,” said Zen. Dirks was from the other party, but the two got along personally and even on occasion voted the same way. In fact, Dirks had been one of the early supporters of Zen’s bill to establish a scholarship program reimbursing college graduates who joined the service as officers after graduation. The bill had just passed the Senate that morning.
“Have you heard what happened to Senator Osten?” asked Dirks.
“No,” said Zen. Al Osten was the ranking senator on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I’m on my way to the White House. He’s going to be there.”
“No,” said Dirks. “They just took him in an ambulance. I was right there. They think he was having a heart attack.”
