The Eagle's Covenant

by Michael Parker

  The light from the high, barred window did little to brighten the gloom, but Conor had no quarrel with that. He had been in far worse prison cells than this. The Middle East variety did nothing for the health and welfare of the inmates, and Conor had been in the best (or should that be the worst?).

  His predicament was nowhere near as serious as some of his earlier incarcerations. From what he knew of interrogation techniques, he could last the distance until there was no longer any reason to hold him. He had nothing to fear from a physical beating because it was extremely unlikely the German police would stoop to such tactics. He had also prepared himself well, mentally, and couldn’t think of anything they could, legally, lay at his doorstep. If he’d forgotten anything, he didn’t know what it was. And it was too late anyway.

  They had taken most of his things including his belt and shoe laces. They had left him with his shoes, trousers and T-shirt; nothing else. He wasn’t unhappy with that either. He had lain naked once, in stinking filth, at very low temperatures for several days by jailers who had been determined to break him. But Conor was a tough bastard which was why men like him were employed by Governments to do their dirty work.

  The door to his cell opened and a policeman hooked a finger at him. Conor got to his feet and walked in front of the policeman. He went up a flight of stairs and into an interview room. There was a table and a couple of chairs in the room. Against one wall was a mirror which Conor assumed was one way. It allowed others to witness the interrogation. There was also a tape recording device on a bench. A uniformed policeman stood at ease against a wall. Conor sat down, his back to a reinforced, frosted glass window and waited for his interrogator to come in.

  A few minutes later the door opened and Hoffman walked in. He paused for a moment studying Conor. He seemed to make up his mind about something and switched on the tape. He gave the date, time and names of all those present in the room’ including Conor’s pseudonym; John Buck. Then he sat down opposite Conor.

  “Do you smoke?” Conor nodded. Hoffman produced a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Conor lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out of his mouth, directing it away from Hoffman. “Do you want a drink? Tea? Coffee?”

  “Tea please, milk and sugar.”

  “It’s out of a machine,” Hoffman warned him.

  Conor shrugged. “So be it.”

  Hoffman leaned back in his chair and asked one of the officers present to fetch a cup of tea for the prisoner.

  “How long have you been in Germany?” Hoffman asked.

  “Six months.”

  “Have you worked at any time during those six months?”

  Conor shook his head. “No.”

  “Do you have any friends here, people who could vouch for you?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re a loner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you here?”

  Conor shrugged. “I like the country.”

  “You don’t work, have no friends, but like the country which is why you stay. What do you do for money?”

  “I have funds.”

  “Counterfeit funds?” Hoffman suggested.

  “Not as far as I know.”

  They had searched Conor’s bed sit and his apartment, but had found no counterfeit money, nor evidence of any.

  “What is your relationship with Frau Schiller?”

  “She’s an old friend.”

  “A special friend?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you visit her at Godesberg the day before yesterday?”

  “Just wanted to say hallo.”

  “You were seen leaving her house just before midnight, in darkness and in what can only be described as ‘unusual circumstances’. Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted to avoid the Press.”

  “You then made your way to Koblenz. Why?”

  “I heard it was a nice place to visit.”

  Hoffman didn’t say anything for a while. He just studied Conor, without expression, wondering how tough this man would prove to be.

  “You were seen at the Hoeffler Apartments. Why were you there?

  “No particular reason. They were on my way I guess.”

  “And did you go in to the apartments?”

  Conor shook his head, took another lungful of smoke in and blew it away.

  Hoffman took two photographs from his pocket. One was of Jurgen Krabbe, the other of Oscar Schwarz. He pushed them across the table to Conor.

  “Do you know, or recognise either of these men?”

  Conor studied the two photographs at length. His expression never changed until he screwed his face up. “No,” he said, pushing them back across the table at Hoffman.

  “Let me try some names on you.” Hoffman kept his eyes on Conor’s, hoping to see some small blink of a memory. “Breggie de Kok?” Conor shook his head. “Joseph Schneider?” The shake of the head again. “Karl Trucco?” Same result. Hoffman knew he was wasting his time. The door opened and the police officer came in with Conor’s tea. Hoffman waited until Conor had the tea and continued with the questions.

  The interview went on for another two hours. Hoffman tried every subterfuge he knew to unbalance and trick Conor into some kind of admission that he could work on. But Conor’s answers were resolutely economic, almost monosyllabic, and bloody hard to break down. Hoffman terminated the interview and switched the tape off.

  “Can I have something to eat now?” Conor asked before he left. “And am I entitled to a phone call?”

  Hoffman laughed quietly. “We’ll get you something to eat, naturally. But a phone call?” He left it hanging in the air for a moment. “You want to contact your solicitor, right?”

  Conor shook his head. “I don’t have a solicitor.”

  “We could get you one,” Hoffman informed him.

  Conor laughed. “I bet you could, but no thanks. I may want the phone call later though, but not yet.”

  Hoffman tipped his head in a mock bow. “Very well Herr Lenihan, as you want. You will be taken back to your cell now and some food will be brought to you.”

  “My name is Buck,” Conor reminded him. “John Buck.”

  Hoffman nodded. “My apologies, it was a slip of the tongue.” He had hoped Conor might have reacted normally to his real name, by not reacting in the way that he did. Because Hoffman’s department had identified Conor, there was no reason, no legal reason why Conor couldn’t have changed his name to John Buck. He decided that it was not important. For the moment.

  “Oh, there’s one other thing,” Conor said.

  Hoffman smiled. “One other thing?” he repeated mockingly. “Why not?”

  “When can I go?” Conor asked him.

  It was Hoffman’s turn to laugh. “Go? Never, I hope. Why?”

  “I want to know when to make that phone call.”

  Hoffman was intrigued. “I don’t understand.”

  Conor sat upright in his chair. He held one hand open and tapped its palm with the finger of his other hand. “You can only hold me for so long, right? Then you either let me walk, or release me on bail. How long?”

  “We can hold you for quite some time yet, Mister Buck. We can get a magistrate’s order to extend the period if we believe we have sufficient grounds. But as far as releasing you on bail, who would post it and where would you go?”

  Hoffman couldn’t help chuckling at what he believed was a dilemma for Conor. But somehow he had an uneasy feeling that Conor was already one step ahead of him. He shook his head despairingly and walked out of the interview room.

  *

  Uwe Jansch and Otto Lechter had sat behind the one way mirror for the entire length of the interview. The room was thick with the smoke from Lechter’s cigarettes. The debris from potato crisp packets and chocolate bars littered the table, mingling with the stained, plastic coffee cups that had fortified them throughout Conor’s skilful handling of their chief.

  Jansch pushed himself up from his chair when he saw
Hoffman leave the interview-room and arched his eyebrows at Lechter. The message was left unsaid but it carried a great deal of meaning. Lechter nodded his unspoken reply and they left the room together.

  Hoffman was on his way back to his office. He glanced back over his shoulder and waited for the two men to catch him up. They said nothing, not even as they went up in the lift to Hoffman’s operations room, keeping quiet until they were all seated round the desk, the door closed behind them.

  “Well?” Hoffman asked. “What’s the verdict?”

  Jansch waited for Lechter to speak, giving way to his seniority. “You’re not going to break him, Erich. He’s too clever.”

  Hoffman conceded that. “So he should be; he’s been trained by the best in the world.”

  Lechter signalled his disbelief with a quick shake of the head. “He has no alibis, not one person to vouch for him, yet he oozes confidence. He has nothing to fear.”

  “I don’t think ‘fear’ is the right word for his kind,” Hoffman observed. “It’s milked out of them before they are released on to an unsuspecting world.”

  “He doesn’t appear to have done anything wrong,” Jansch put in. “But we know he has.”

  “Do we?” asked Hoffman. He looked at Lechter. “Your men couldn’t find any counterfeit money at either of his places, could they?”

  “We know he had some, but, it’s like he said; he could have got that from anywhere.” Lechter looked bitter. “It’s all circumstantial. We could never take him to court on what little evidence we have.”

  Hoffman flipped open a file that lay on the desk in front of him. It was a report from the forensic laboratory on Conor’s clothing. “No powder burns. So we cannot link the deaths of Krabbe or Schwarz to him. We are confident he entered the apartments, but not that he was involved in the rape and murder of Breggie de Kok, nor that of Kleiber.” Kleiber was the gorilla who had killed Breggie. “It looks like a straightforward case of rape, self-defence and both dying as a result.” He closed the file. “Which we know is bullshit!”

  “You think Lenihan killed them, sir?”

  Hoffman tapped the desk hard with his fingers. “I don’t know. How could he?” The question was largely rhetorical. “But I just have a feeling he was involved.”

  “It’s the same with the kidnapping, isn’t it?” Jansch said. “We are pretty confident he was involved, but cannot prove it. All the terrorists are dead.”

  “Except Lenihan,” Hoffman reminded him.

  “But we don’t know, do we?” Jansch countered. “We’ve got no proof. The only witnesses we have to the kidnap are the Schillers, and they can’t tell us anything except Breggie de Kok was the leader. She’s dead. They’re all dead. End of story.”

  Hoffman sighed heavily. “I know what you’re saying, Uwe. We’ll just have to hope something turns up.”

  “Mister Micawber.” Lechter observed.

  Hoffman looked puzzled. “What?”

  “Charles Dickens? Micawber?”

  “Oh yes, the eternal optimist; would have made a good policeman, but a poor detective.”

  They all laughed. If nothing else, it had done something to lighten the mood. And at that point, the meeting broke up for a late lunch.

  *

  Joanna was standing by the large window overlooking Schiller’s magnificent view of the southern Eifels Mountains. Their verdant slopes dipping down to the Mosel, gently meandering through vineyards, their vines casting lengthening shadows in the evening sun. It was always a beautiful and peaceful place to be.

  Joanna was happy and content now. Her darling Manny was back with them, safe in the nursery. He had been declared fit and unharmed by the kidnap. She had a crooked doctor to thank for that. And although she didn’t know how, she was sure Conor had found some way to let the police know where her baby was being held. She hadn’t seen him since he left her place under the cover of darkness, and wondered if she was likely to. At other times, and in different circumstances, she knew she would have liked to have known him better. She felt ashamed of that because he was a killer, but he had a certain atavism that attracted her feminine instincts.

  She felt a movement at her side. It was Manfred Schiller. He had a glass of Krug Champagne in his hand. “Penny for your thoughts, meine liebchen.”

  “Oh,” she started wistfully. “I was thinking of the reason for Manny’s kidnap.”

  “The Covenant?”

  “Yes, the Covenant,” she replied. “I was thinking of how many people have died because of it.”

  “Not because of the Covenant, dear Joanna,” – he raised his glass as he made his point – “But the people who chose to commit those barbaric acts.”

  “But the Covenant is the catalyst. And it will go on being the catalyst.”

  He smiled. It was patronising. “Don’t worry your pretty head about the Covenant. It will give control to those who want peace. To those who deserve peace.”

  She regarded him with a sense of pity. “And feed the hatred of those who will destroy that peace and the peace of others.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “Who, the Arabs?” He laughed, teasingly. “Dear Joanna, what nonsense. The Israelis are almost Arabs themselves. The Covenant will serve them all.”

  Joanna thought of Manny and others like him; newly born into a world torn apart by hatred, religious dogma, ethnic cleansing and xenophobia. Into that the Covenant would put the tools of Satan and the insidious weapons of modern man.

  “You still intend to transfer your power, despite my arguments,” she asked him, “and despite all my pleas?”

  He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Joanna, I love you and our little Manny more than I love life itself. I would do nothing I thought would harm either of you.” He let his hand fall to his side. “But I must tell you that your arguments and your pleas have fallen on deaf ears. I will sign the Covenant and transfer control of my satellites three days from now. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop me.”

  *

  Jansch was reading through the statement provided by the security guard who had been at the front desk when Breggie de Kok met her untimely death. He claimed that two men, one of whom had been found dead in Breggie’s apartment, had walked into the building and shown him a Polaroid photograph of his wife. She was sitting on a sofa. Beside her was a masked man holding a gun to her head. She was holding a copy of the daily paper. There was no mistaking the implied threat, so when they demanded to know which apartment Breggie de Kok was in and that he hand over a master key, he didn’t argue. One man, the one who died, went up to the apartment, the other remained at the desk to ensure the security guard did nothing ‘foolish’.

  When the guard had been shown a photograph of Conor Lenihan, he told the police he had never seen the man. Asked what had happened to the second man, the guard told them he had vanished during the commotion caused by the fire alarms. A check with the man’s wife confirmed his story which the police had expected it to, but the couple remained on the suspect list.

  When Jansch had finished reading the statement, he took a video from same file box and inserted it into the machine. It was a fire department video recording of the incident at the apartment building. There was something puzzling Jansch, something niggling away at him that he had seen somewhere. He watched the recording which lasted about thirty minutes.

  He had watched the video the first time earlier that day because he had hoped to see something which might help to incriminate the Irishman, Lenihan. But he had been disappointed. The second run was no better than the first. He gave up and moved on to the surveillance photographs which clearly identified Conor at the scene. Because he had never denied being by the apartments, there was little point in trying to prove Conor was lying about his movements.

  The photographs also contained stills from the Fire Department video. He shovelled them about on his desk, scanning each one, looking for something, when Hoffman walked in. Jansch looked up and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost
midnight.

  “Hallo sir. Can’t you sleep either?”

  Hoffman helped himself to a cup of coffee from the vending machine. “What are you doing, Uwe? Looking for inspiration?”

  Jansch leaned back in his chair. “Something like that.”

  Hoffman walked over to the desk. He looked at the photographs, sipping his coffee.

  “Nice motor.” He pointed in the general direction of the desktop.

  Jansch leaned forward and picked up one of the stills. Caught neatly in the middle of a shot was a BMW. It was a Seven series. It had darkened windows. Jansch picked up a magnifying glass and scanned the shot. What caught his eye was the figure of a man on the far side of the road whose body position suggested he was about to cross over towards the car.

  He glanced quickly at Hoffman, an unspoken question forming on his lips. Then he reached across to the video player and rewound the tape. Hoffman watched with growing curiosity as Jansch punched the play button.

  The film fluttered into life and, once again, Jansch sat back to watch for something significant. The video began indistinctly because the camera was being held by one of the fire crew inside the cab of the fire truck. The figure of the man standing on the far side of the road came into view almost within seconds of the fire tender passing the parked BMW. He was obviously waiting for the fire truck to pass him before crossing the road. As the crew member holding the camera stepped out of the fire truck, the camera swung back towards the rear of the tender and caught the figure climbing into the open door of a BMW motor car.

  “Look!” he exclaimed suddenly and touched the screen, pointing at the image. The car rolled smoothly away from the kerb as soon as he was in and disappeared off the screen. The reason Jansch had not seen it earlier was because he had been concentrating on the building.