Lura sat primly on the rear seat of the bus. Her hair and makeup were perfect. Only a patch of silken calf and her red shoes protruded from beneath her coat. The pilot and the copilot and the rest of the United Network News people sprawled on the bench seats filling the bus’s midsection, surrounded by their piles of carry-on luggage. An emaciated cameraman with a graying ponytail sat by the rear exit door, holding a camcorder.
I stayed on my feet, clutching one of the center poles. The driver snapped the doors shut, then eased the bus forward. The engine was so silent, I heard only the squeal and thud of the wipers clearing the windshield. There was one passenger on the bus who had not been with us on the plane. The seat behind the driver was filled by a broad-shouldered man in a business suit. He’d been making notes on a clipboard and hadn’t looked up when I passed him. From the rear, I saw only dark hair so close-cropped it exaggerated the bullet shape of his head and neck. His shirt lay in a thin white stripe at the base of his skull, like the crimp on a cartridge, the only indication of where his neck began.
We were headed toward the terminal building. I was edgy. I didn’t expect trouble with Passport Control, not in Hamburg. Buchanan would have red-flagged my name and passport number in the computer system used by the airline counter people—the ones who ask international travelers for their documents along with their tickets. At any airport in North America, I’d have been stopped at check-in. Buchanan hadn’t had time or justification to do more. It was only midnight back in D.C. The FBI should be trying to serve me with their subpoena.
Still, I was uneasy. I tried to calm myself. Buchanan might alert Immigration at Heathrow or Kastrup, but he wouldn’t bother the people in Hamburg. If I’d flown commercial, I couldn’t get here without first stopping at a major hub. No, I reassured myself, I needn’t worry. No drowsy border guard coming off the night shift in Hamburg was going to notice Casey Collins. But it took all my self-control not to shift my weight from my right foot to my left, let everyone see how nervous I was.
The driver turned, following a grid layout that would bring us around three sides of a rectangle to park parallel to the curb in front of the terminal. Seat springs complained on my right as Ponytail shifted his position. He raised the camcorder and stared through the lens, making adjustments. I let go of the pole and stepped closer to the rear door. I rubbed condensation off the window and peered out at the building.
A quartet of uniformed policemen stood in front of a television crew, its members dressed as haphazardly as my companions. They were watching our bus approach.
Something clicked. The red light lit up on the camcorder. It was aimed at me. I jerked back from the doorway and faced Lura. She was staring at the terminal, her mouth open. I said, “Some favor you’re doing me.”
“You should have told me.” Lura’s voice was shrill. “I’d never have let this happen.”
“Let what happen?”
"I pitched my idea about you to my producer. She smelled a bigger story.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Ponytail rise, angling for a better shot. I turned and slammed my open palms against the camcorder. It crashed to the floor of the bus.
Ponytail bellowed.
“A bigger story?” I yelled at Lura. “That’s why you’re here!” I looked for a button that would open the door in front of me.
“I’m your friend.” Lura was on her feet. “That’s why I’m here. My producer said, ‘What if Casey’s in trouble? What if she’s on the run? The network can’t aid and abet a fugitive.’.”
“Why didn’t she call Buchanan, she thought I was a wanted woman?”
“I told her you weren’t,” Lura said. “You couldn’t be.”
“And she believed you, right?” I spotted no convenient button promising to open the door in front of me. I ran to the front of the bus, searching for a device that would do the trick. I didn’t spot a lever. I threw my body against the door. A jarring pain shot from my shoulder to my sternum. The door didn’t flex.
The stocky man seated behind the driver tossed aside his clipboard. He stood and said something terse in German. Instead of turning right toward the terminal, the driver held the wheel steady and accelerated through the intersection.
“Hey, buddy,” the pilot said. “What’s going on?”
The suited man held up a badge case and flashed a gold-embossed credential. “We’re making a detour for reasons of security.” His accent was hard to place—not German, not French, with a peculiar richness that wasn’t Scandinavian either. “After I remove the woman, the driver will deliver you to the terminal.”
Lura was standing in the aisle. “I never thought this would happen,” she said to me. “My producer was going to call the FBI after we took off, to cover the network.”
“You set it up so you could film my arrest.” I made a disgusted noise. “You’re the reporter on the scene.”
“But I didn’t want that. I wanted you to be innocent.”
She’d wanted. Past tense. She’d abandoned that desire. Decided I was guilty of something. Moral dilemma neatly resolved. She’d done her civic duty and now she’d get her ninety seconds on prime time.
I pressed my back against the door and shoved harder. My heart was pounding. I looked wildly around. Maybe I could grab something heavy enough to break glass.
Ponytail appeared behind Lura, holding the camcorder.
“No film,” said the plainclothes policeman.
The bus driver made a wide turn that took us around the far side of the terminal. He braked there, slowing us gently to a stop opposite an unmarked door.
The arresting officer stood at the head of the aisle, blocking my retreat toward the rear. He was no more than three inches taller than me, but his body was much thicker. His closely cut hair receded at the temples, and the overlarge forehead glistened like the deadly nose of a dum-dum round.
Ponytail ran his hands over the camcorder, as if checking for damage. Then the red light came on. He pushed past Lura to crouch in the center of the bus, aiming at me again.
The cop stepped forward on his right foot. Then his left leg came up and his foot smashed the camcorder against Ponytail’s face. There was a popping noise, like twigs snapping. Again the camera crashed to the floor. The cameraman was curled beside it, clutching his nose, blood running between his fingers and into his mouth.
The policeman picked up the shattered device and twisted out the film cartridge. He stuffed it into his pocket and said, “Here we do not appreciate the media circus.” He tossed the broken camcorder on a seat as he came toward me. He grabbed my left bicep and barked again at the driver. The door flew open and the cop pushed me through it. I stumbled, but his grip was so strong, I couldn’t fall. As soon as we were both on the ground, the door slammed shut and the bus rumbled away.
With his free hand, the cop jerked open the door in front of us and shoved me inside the building. I found myself in a cor
ridor lit by a single fluorescent tube on the ceiling. I smelled old dust. The corridor went straight for a hundred feet, then turned left at a ninety-degree angle. Somewhere out of sight, machinery clattered. My heart was beating fast. Adrenaline had my nerves tuned tight. I gathered my muscles and got ready.
The cop let go of my arm. “Run if you prefer.” He gestured down the corridor. “That path will take you to the working side of the baggage-claim area. Perhaps you can slip out that way.”
His bluish lips curled in a way that made his expression as snide as his tone. He knew I couldn’t saunter unnoticed through a crowd of baggage handlers. And my odds were no better if I went alone back out onto the tarmac. Which left me with this man and his strange accent. “You’re not German,” I said.
“Obviously not.” He removed a satchel from a niche beside the door and pulled out a pair of blue coveralls. He tossed them to me. Then he started jamming himself into a matching set.
There was a change in the din coming from the far end of the corridor. People talking more loudly. A s
hrill whistle. A dog’s bark. A man’s bellow. I didn’t understand the German, but I recognized the abruptness of a command. The dog barked again and the footfall of heavy boots echoed down the corridor.
6
I snatched the coveralls and yanked them over my legs. They smelled of engine grease. My companion clapped hard hats on both our heads, grabbed the satchel and opened the door to the outside. Minutes later, we were in the front seat of an electric cart, pulling three linked wagons loaded with suitcases.
The cart grumbled around the terminal building, heading toward the array of planes parked beyond Passport Control. The rain was still falling, a cold drizzle that made streaks of darker blue on the coveralls, then quickly moistened all the fabric to the same damp shade. The rumpled collar grew clammy against my neck. My skin itched with the rashy feel of things out of control.
The sky was still navy blue, the winter night unaffected by the scraps of daylight on the horizon. Rain blurred the outlines of everything more than fifty feet in the distance. Closer to us, the bus idled at the terminal building. A crowd milled around it, cameramen with belts and shoulder packs, a technician juggling a padded microphone on a boom, uniformed policemen, including one with a leashed dog, prowling over the scene of my rescue. If it was a rescue.
Lura stood to one side, microphone in hand, speaking earnestly toward one of the cameras. She didn’t look away from the lens. I hunched my shoulders and tried to become nothing more than a blue unisex body topped by a canary-yellow hat.
We took a meandering route through the parked planes, ending up on the far side near a collection of buildings. We stopped beside a door marked as a men’s toilet. My blue-suited companion set the brake and jumped down, leaving the cart idling. I followed him around the building to what must have been the employee parking lot. He led me to a Volkswagen Jetta, dark brown, not new and spattered with mud. Two pairs of skis were racked on top. The country decal showed a capital “CH,” the designation for Switzerland. I eyed my companion. Definitely not Swiss. Not a man accustomed to neutrality.
He popped open the trunk, tossed in the satchel and his hard hat and began stripping off his coveralls. I did the same. He held out a plastic bag. “Empty your pockets into this.” When I hesitated, he shook the bag. “Anything that identifies you. In here—now.” Reluctantly, I pulled my passport and wallet from the zippered pocket inside my jacket and dropped them in. Then I added a handful of coins.
He closed the bag and shoved it into the tire well beneath the spare. Then he slammed the trunk and motioned me toward the passenger door. He slid behind the wheel and handed me a knitted cap patterned in red and blue and sporting a fluffy pom-pom. He’d donned a watch cap that outlined his ovoid skull. He looked more like an underwater demolition expert than a skier. I put on my hat and tucked my hair inside.
The man studied me, then reached across and pulled the wool lower on my forehead until it covered my eyebrows. His fingers smelled like harsh laundry soap. He grunted. “Slide down in the seat and close your eyes as though you are resting.” He backed out of the parking space. “With luck, no one will mistake you for an American fugitive. That is, if you can refrain from smiling and waving at the passersby.”
My companion drove out of the lot with arrogant confidence, his right hand on the wheel, his left dangling out of sight beside his seat. We left the airport behind and joined the rush of commuter traffic. I sat up straight and my hand went automatically to the door handle. My German was rudimentary, but Nord and Süd are pretty easy to figure out. We were driving south, away from the Jutland Peninsula. Away from Denmark and the Father-Major. “Okay,” I said to my driver. “You got me out of there. Thanks. I can take it from here.”
“You?” He made a disparaging noise as he cut into the left-hand lane and accelerated. “If it weren’t for me, your arrest would now be on worldwide television.”
“A miscalculation. I can manage now.”
“Manage? Oh, yes, I’m sure you can. Manage to get yourself locked up and interrogated.”
“Listen—”
“No.” His voice was like a club. “You listen. You should have stayed in Washington.”
“I had to get out of the U.S. If I hadn’t—”
“You would be someone else’s problem. Not mine.”
“Yours? Who the hell are you?”
“At this moment, the only person who can keep you out of prison.”
The flat certainty in his voice defied me to protest. I didn’t have a good one to make. Instead I asked, “But who, specifically, are you?”
His voice slid into an oily imitation of courtesy. “You must forgive my poor manners. I was somewhat preoccupied.” He tipped his head down in a mocking nod. “Major Hans van Hoof, at your service.”
The name was Flemish. The peculiar accent came from the mishmash of Dutch, French and German spoken by Belgians. I let my shoulders drop. Major Hans van Hoof was a Belgian soldier. And Belgium was part of NATO. The Father-Major had never mentioned any Belgian connections, but maybe Hans van Hoof was a new recruit. I said, “Holger Sorensen sent you.”
“No. No one sent me.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I was made aware of a problem. I am resolving it.”
So I’d been labeled “a problem.” I wasn’t going to like his solution. I asked, “Where are we going?”
“Brussels.”
“No way,” I said. “You go to Brussels. Drop me at the next train station. I have to straighten things out with Holger.”
“You can’t go to Denmark.”
“Has the FBI got Holger under surveillance?”
“The FBI and Denmark’s Politi. Perhaps Scotland Yard, too. All the police hounds have your scent, Casey Collins.”
“What can I do?”
“I’ll hide you tonight.”
“And then?”
“You’ll get out of the way.”
“What does that mean?”
His tone got harsher. “Isn’t it obvious? You must take your demented activity away. You must go someplace where no one has any interest in you.”
“No interest? Then I can’t go back to D.C.”
“No. But you can’t remain here either. I’ve made arrangements to send you south.”
“You think I’d be less noticeable in the Mediterranean?”
“Farther south.”
I tried to make a joke. “Where, the Belgian Congo?”
“Whatever they are calling themselves these days. Perfect, I think. Conditions there are so chaotic, no one will notice your arrival. I know a nice, safe spot on the coast where you can take a long vacation.”
“Not a chance. I’m not leaving Europe. Not until I find out who blew up Global Flight 500.”
“How ridiculously American you sound.”
I swallowed my angry retort. I needed to be clever now, to provoke this man into revealing his connection to Holger. “How cynically European you sound. Somebody killed your colleague. But for you, Stefan’s loss is a setback, nothing more.”
“I am disappointed. I expected I would be dealing with a rational person—not a hysterical infant.”
Bingo. No reaction to the word “colleague.” Or to the name Stefan. Instead, an abrupt conversational shift that brought me back to the edge of my seat. “Won’t work, Hans. I know the tactic. Why don’t you want to talk about Stefan?”
He turned his head slightly to meet my gaze. Something flickered in his eyes. Perhaps loathing. Perhaps empathy. It was gone before I could put a name to it. He said, “I will allow nothing to interfere with our plans.”
Then he quit replying to my questions. After being rebuffed three times in thirty seconds, I stopped talking, too. The car took on the sour scents of damp wool and my wet, unwashed hair. The defroster put out paltry heat and a strong smell of burned dust. I was cold and the noxious odors unsettled my stomach. Van Hoof wasn’t a cop, as I’d first thought. But I was his prisoner all the same. He’d helped me escape incarce
ration in a federal penitentiary. But he wanted to ship me to his private penal colony in Africa.
My elbow banged against the door, my muscles jerky with panic. I hugged myself, overpowering my fear. Could van Hoof do what he wished with me?
Without moving my head, I glanced at him. His watch cap grazed the ceiling and his shoulders were broader than the seatback. He gazed intently at the road ahead, but he’d relaxed into the driver’s seat, legs spread wide. My thigh was only inches from his and I saw the difference. Legs twice as thick and probably twice as powerful as mine.
I loosened my grip on myself, flexed my fingers. I was smaller and weaker, but maybe I was smarter. Maybe he couldn’t control my life as easily as he thought. He’d said he’d allow nothing to interfere with his plans.
I had plans of my own. Get to Holger. Find out who had killed Stefan. And now one more: Get away from van Hoof. I stared out the window as we drove through the drizzle toward the Low Countries of Europe. This wasn’t the direction in which I wanted to go. But then again, it wasn’t the direction my pursuers would expect me to take. I’d let van Hoof take me where no one knew me. Where no one was looking for me. Once we’d evaded the FBI, I’d ditch him.
The prospect of action cheered me, yet I didn’t relax. I needed to stay alert. And there was no way I’d permit my slender leg to brush against the massive one beside it.
We crossed from Germany into the Netherlands. Near Apeldoorn, van Hoof pulled into a service area. He watched me through the rear window as he pumped fuel. When the tank was full, he walked over to the cashier to pay. I spotted the gold-embossed cover of a foreign passport tucked into the driver-side door pocket. I leaned across his seat and found not one but two Swiss passports, kept close at hand as if van Hoof expected to encounter a roadblock where he’d need to produce identity documents in a hurry. The top one revealed a grainy photo of a generic brunette. Younger than I was, shorter, but with help from Clairol, I could pass for Fräulein Keck. Not bad on short notice. I flipped open the second passport, expecting to see van Hoof’s fleshy features. But only the hairstyle matched. The face belonged to Stefan.
12 Drummers Drumming Page 6
