McGarvey's eyes bored into Kurshin's skull. Kurshin looked up and smiled for the general. "Thank you."
Didenko returned the smile. "You fly to Baghdad tonight from Schonefeld Airport. You'll be met and your transportation across the border arranged as soon as you arrive."
"Yes."
At the door, Kurshin hesitated then turned back, willing a perfectly neutral, even humble expression to his face. "Where is he at this moment?" he asked. "Have his people picked him up yet? Is he still in Paris?"
"Why, no," Didenko said. "As a matter of fact the man is in Freiburg in the Black Forest at this very moment. With a young woman ... Argentinian, I believe. For what reason I couldn't tell you, except that they're apparently poking around old Nazi records." Didenko's eyes narrowed. "You have a flight to catch, Arkasha. It would be unfortunate if you were to forget our agreement."
"Oh, I won't, Comrade General. Believe me in this. I will not forget."
It was about power, Kurshin decided, calming down on the way back into the city. General Didenko had planned all along to tell him that McGarvey was in Germany so that he could exhibit his power over his subordinate.
But he'd learned something else: Didenko was having him followed, and meant to have him killed if he did not comply. Tehran had to be vitally important to his plans, whatever they were.
In the darkness of the back seat of the Mercedes, Kurshin took out his gun and by feel investigated whether it had been tampered with while it was out of his possession. As far as he could tell it had not been.
They were not far from Schonefeld Airport. Kurshin could see the airport's rotating beacon in the distance, perhaps five or six miles away. But he could also see sparks, like fireflies glittering in his head. The muscles in his legs were twitching as if he were running ... or treading water.
He turned and looked out the back window. In the distance behind them was a pair of headlights. There was no other traffic.
"Slow down," he told the driver.
"What are you talking about? I am taking you to the airport," the man said.
Kurshin brought his pistol over the back of the seat and laid the muzzle against the base of the man's skull. "I want you to pull over and park."
At first the driver did not respond. Kurshin pulled the hammer back.
"Fuck your mother, I'll stop," the driver snarled, jabbing hard on the brakes.
"Easy," Kurshin warned. "Wait till I tell you." He glanced out the rear window. The headlights were much closer already.
They came to a track that led off to the right, probably toward a farm. It looked as if it had been plowed recently. "Pull in here."
The driver complied, the big car skidding slightly as they made the turn and came to a halt a few yards off the highway.
The moment the engine was off, Kurshin shot the man in the back of the head at point-blank range, the driver's body slamming forward with a violent lurch.
Kurshin got out of the car, and holding the pistol out of sight behind his right leg, he walked back up to the highway.
The other car had pulled up about ten yards away. A man stuck his head out the window on the passenger side. "What is it?" he shouted in Russian, and Kurshin smiled. He was one of Didenko's people.
CROSSFIRE HI
"It's my driver. Something's the matter with him. I think he might have had a heart attack."
After a moment, the man in the car shouted, "That's impossible."
"Well, I don't know," Kurshin replied. "But I'll be damned if I'm just going to stand around here like this in the middle of the night. I have a plane to catch. How about a ride, comrade?"
There was another hesitation, but then the car moved closer. Kurshin stepped aside as it pulled up, idling. With the headlights no longer in his eyes, he could see that there were only two men in it.
"Now, what's this all about?" the one on the passenger side asked as he started to open his door.
Kurshin shot him in the face. Before the driver could react, he shot him in the throat and then in the forehead.
The car lurched forward a couple of yards, coming to rest in a ditch.
Holstering his weapon, Kurshin walked back to his car, pulled the driver out into the snowbank, cleaned the blood from the dashboard and windshield, and headed back into Berlin, away from the airport.
Tehran might be important to the general, but McGarvey had somehow gotten out of Paris. He was still at large, traveling in an unexpected direction. Kurshin's original plan had been to lure McGarvey to various European capitals, killing the CIA chief of station in each the moment McGarvey had shown up.
He'd wanted to place McGarvey in a cross fire between his own people, the local authorities, and Kurshin's own gunsights. In the end McGarvey s death would be celebrated in his own home. He would end up despised.
But already things had changed, and Kurshin found he was having trouble controlling himself. Only one thing was certain in his mind now: no matter what happened, he was going to kill McGarvey. No force on earth could stop him.
"you believe i had something to do with Paris, don't you," Maria Schimmer said.
She and McGarvey stood across the street from Freiburg's famous Rathaus waiting for the traffic to clear so they could cross. For the past twenty-four hours McGarvey had been getting the feeling that they were being watched. This morning it had come on strong from the moment they'd left their hotel on Rotteckring.
He'd not told Maria, nor had he made any effort to mask their movements or elude whoever it was behind them.
At first he thought it might be the federal police, but they would have been more open about their approach. And so far he and Maria had done nothing wrong there, though it was
possible his name and photograph had been flagged at the border crossing. Former CIA assassins tended to make people nervous, especially when they were on the move.
But he did not think it was the Germans, nor did he think it was his own people. This left either the Russians—by now he was convinced that the Russians had been behind the embassy explosion—or someone unknown following Maria for some reason.
They'd been together now for the better part of two days and two nights, and still he had no real idea who she was, or what she was all about. She was reserved without being aloof. She was quiet without being moody. And she seemed open, answering every question he put to her, but she was lying about almost everything. He could see that in her eyes, and at the corners of her mouth.
"I wouldn't be here otherwise," he said to her.
Her nostrils flared, but she held herself in check. "Is that why you keep looking at reflections in storefront windows?"
"Just a precaution," he said. The traffic light changed. He took her arm and they hurried across the street.
"Are you a spy, then?" she asked on the other side. "I thought you might be from the first. Everyone at the embassy seemed frightened of you. I've seen that look before."
"I'll bet you have."
"The third floor, that's where the CIA has its little nest of secrets. Reid was one of them too, wasn't he?"
They were to meet McGarvey's old friend from Switzerland at the Hansahaus Bierstube at noon, but McGarvey walked past the place. Maria knew enough by now not to make any outward sign that their plans had changed.
"This is serious, then," she said, lowering her voice as they continued to walk.
"Someone is back there," McGarvey said. "Anybody coming after you that you know about?"
She shook her head. "You?"
"Plenty," McGarvey said. "But whoever it is, they're damned good. Better than yesterday."
"How do you know we're being followed? For sure. Can you see them?"
"Him," McGarvey said, catching another flash of the man in
the dark homburg just rounding the corner behind them. It was the third time he'd caught a glimpse, but only a glimpse. Whoever was back there was very good.
"Is he behind us now?"
"He has been since the hotel."
<
br /> "Who is it?"
"I don't know," McGarvey said, looking at her. Was she expecting Kurshin, or was he on a wild-goose chase after all, coming here with her like this? "Nobody's after you because of this submarine of yours?"
"There'd be no reason for it, unless they were Israelis still with a grudge," she said.
"Could be," he replied, knowing she was lying. He steered her across the street and down a narrow alleyway.
They came out on a broad square dominated by a tall fountain that was shut down for the winter. Dozens of quaint small shops faced the center. There were a lot of pedestrians, but apparently no cars or trucks were allowed. Across the square they spotted a taxi rank, and they hurried over to it, climbing into the first cab in the row.
"To Denzlingen, please," McGarvey told the driver. It was a separate village to the north, but barely five miles away.
McGarvey looked back as they pulled away, hoping to catch a last glimpse of the man in the homburg, but he did not appear.
"What about your friend we were supposed to meet at the Hansahaus?" Maria asked. "He may have found something for us."
"Denzlingen is his home. We'll wait there for him," McGarvey said.
They rode in silence for a few minutes. Freiburg was a pretty city with a large historic cathedral and a small but good university. But it had never been important, other than as the capital of the Black Forest region, until well after the war, when German naval records had been deposited there after they'd been microfilmed in Washington.
"I was serious back there," Maria said, breaking the silence.
"About Paris?" McGarvey asked.
She nodded. "You've not told me what you were doing in the embassy that night, or why you dropped everything to come here with me. What else am I supposed to think, except that I'm a suspect?"
"You are, and you will be until you stop lying to me," McGarvey said. "But then maybe Dr. Hesse will have found out something, and at least a part of the mystery will be cleared up."
"What mystery?" she flared. "What are you talking about?"
"What you're really after."
"I want to know about my grandfather—"
"Bullshit," McGarvey snapped. The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
"Then what?"
Perhaps he was getting jumpy. His feelings about her and about the situation were confused at best. And a picture of Kurshin kept forming in his mind's eye. When the man had been directed by Baranov, he'd been nothing short of brilliant. But Kurshin was dead, and so was his puppet master.
Perhaps he was grabbing at straws. Paris had been over for him, and by his own admission he'd been looking for an excuse to leave.
But a lot of lives had been lost. CIA operations in Europe would not be the same for years.
His name and passport number had been used by the terrorist to gain entry to the embassy. That had to have been more than mere coincidence.
There were connections within connections. Plots within plots.
Something, he kept telling himself. There was something just beyond his understanding that would suddenly become very clear to him if only he continued with Maria. Somehow, she was the key.
;Then what am I after, if not that?" Maria repeated.
"I don't know," McGarvey said slowly.
For some reason that answer, or lack of answer, seemed particularly disturbing to her.
Denzlingen was a charming little village of less than one thousand people. They stopped at a Gasthaus on the village square and McGarvey telephoned the Hansahaus in Freiburg, leaving a message for Dr. Hesse that they had been unavoidably detained, and that they would like to meet at two that afternoon at the doctor's house. It would give Hesse time to finish his own lunch and return home.
He and Maria had lunch, then spent an hour walking around the village, looking into some of the tiny shops, and at Maria's insistence stopping for a few minutes at the church. At first he thought the gesture had been for his benefit, but she knelt and prayed, apparently sincerely.
At two in the afternoon they walked the half-dozen blocks to the doctor's stone house on the edge of the village. It was just across a narrow stream from a dark woods. An old Volkswagen was parked in front.
Dr. Hesse's aging housekeeper admitted them, showing them into the study. "I shall fetch the professor," the old woman said, and she shuffled off.
Dr. Heinrich Hesse, who claimed to be a distant cousin of the poet and novelist Hermann Hesse, had studied Swiss history in Lausanne for a number of years. He had been a frequent customer of the bookstore McGarvey had owned what seemed like two lifetimes ago, and they had developed a mutual respect for each other's scholarship.
Dr. Hesse was now professor emeritus of European history at the university, and had complete access to all sections of the Naval Records Depot. He was a tiny, wizened old man who walked with a hunch, and who seemed to have trouble breathing. He still smoked several packs of strong cigarettes each day.
The study was at the back of the house and looked out over what would be a pleasant garden in the summer. Books, maps, periodicals, and manuscripts were stacked everywhere in the cramped, musty-smelling room.
"I missed you for lunch," Dr. Hesse said behind them, shambling into the study.
McGarvey turned and they shook hands. The professor shook hands with Maria as well, a twinkle in his eyes.
"I had with me an old friend who wanted to meet you, Fraulein Schimmer. He spent some years in Buenos Aires and thinks he may have known you when you were a little girl. Horst Oest-mann?"
Maria shrugged. "I'm sorry, sir, the name means nothing."
"No matter," Dr. Hesse said. "But on the other business there may be better news for you."
"You found my grandfather's submarine?" Maria asked excitedly. ..
Dr. Hesse held up a cautionary hand. "There seems to be a
mystery of sorts still attached to the boat. Nothing in the record is terribly clear at this point, though my intention is to continue with my research."
Maria and McGarvey exchanged glances. He could read nothing in her eyes except excitement.
"But you have found something?" McGarvey asked.
"Oh, heavens, yes," Dr. Hesse exclaimed. "The boat is there, all right, off Argentina, or at least it was there. But what it was doing that far west and at that time—the very end of the war —has been the cause of a dozen deaths."
"It was war," Maria said.
"Begging your pardon, but the most recent death connected with that boat occurred in 1978. The war was over."
"what deaths?" mcgarvey asked. "How do you know they were connected with the submarine?"
"That's simple," Dr. Hesse explained. "The first three men to die, and the last, had all served on a board of inquiry convened by the West German Secret Service—the BND—four years after the war, to find out what happened to U2798." He looked at Maria. "That was your grandfather's boat."
"But there were hundreds of submarines lost," Maria said. "Why a board of inquiry after the war to find out what happened to that particular boat?"
"It was still missing without a trace," Dr. Hesse replied. "Or at least that's part of the explanation. Remember, besides your grandfather there was a crew of nearly forty men and officers.
Good German boys who were lost. There were many parents who demanded to know their fate."
"What type of boat was she?" McGarvey asked.
"One of the last to be built. A Walther twenty-six. Not many ever saw service—they were designed and commissioned too late in the war—but apparently she was quite a technological marvel in her day."
McGarvey could hear a touch of pride in the old man's voice. "What was her normal complement?"
Dr. Hesse looked at him with approval. "She was supposed to carry a crew of fifty-seven men and officers, which meant she was terribly shorthanded when she left the yard at Bremen, or if not, then certainly when she started across the Atlantic."
"But ... ?" McGarvey prompted. T
here was more. There was always more.
"She went to sea with thirty-nine men and officers ... and one passenger," Dr. Hesse said. He went to his desk and pulled out several fat files from a bulging briefcase. "These are copies of some of the original documents. I thought you might want to study them."
"The passenger," McGarvey wanted to know.
Dr. Hesse flipped open a file folder. "Major Walther Roebling."
"Army?" Maria asked. She was shivering.
"RSHA," Dr. Hesse corrected. "The Nazi secret service. He was a close personal friend of Walther Schellenberg, who headed the foreign espionage section of the service."
"What was he doing aboard?" McGarvey asked.
"Therein lies the mystery. Presumably he was carrying either a message or some unknown cargo to Argentina. Whatever it was seemed to be of great interest to the BND."
"A lot of SS took refuge in Argentina," McGarvey said.
"Yes."
"And the BND weren't the only ones interested in whatever it was Major Roebling was up to in 1945," McGarvey said. "Interested enough to kill. Any hint of what he was carrying, or who it was intended for?"
"None, other than the obvious fact that it was of vital importance."
"The killings started when?"
"In 1949"
"Were they investigated by the BND?"
"The first few were. After that, the file was turned over to the new West German Federal Police Bureau, who were supposed to message the BND in Munich. They did so until 1978 when the investigation was abruptly closed with no explanation."
"Wait a moment," Maria interrupted. "I'm a little confused about something. The records you've been researching, Herr Professor, deal with the military during the war."
Dr. Hesse nodded.
"How did you come to learn about the BND's involvement and these murders which all occurred well after the war?"
Crossfire (Kirk McGarvey 3) Page 11
