Without Options

by Trevor Scott

  “How did I know?” Andre asked. “First of all, she’s carrying a pistol on her right hip. Second, you wouldn’t let her know what you’re doing if you didn’t trust her. And last of all, you wouldn’t trust her unless she was either CIA, BND or Austrian Intel. Given her accent, I’d say she was Bavarian. Which means BND.” He hesitated to let his revelations set in. “Besides, we got a Blue Notice on one Alexandra Schecht this morning. You need to update your photo. You are much more beautiful in person. Any relation to Gunter Schecht?”

  Alexandra’s jaw tightened but she said nothing.

  “I think you know that also,” Jake said. “Why’d they issue a Blue Notice on her? She’s done nothing.”

  “A Blue Notice simply asks local law enforcement to acquire additional information about a person’s possible illegal activities,” Andre instructed. “She was with you when you shot those men this morning. Her car was caught on another video camera picking you up. You understand.”

  Yeah, Jake understood. He had gotten Alexandra in way too far and he wasn’t pleased with himself. “Which is why we can’t get onto her BND account. Can you give us access?”

  Subdued, Andre nodded his head in agreement.

  Jake got onto his computer and used Andre’s access to the Interpol database. He first did a series of requests for information on those who he’d shot that morning, including the man he’d interrogated. He quickly saved that data to his laptop. Then he searched a few more areas of interest. While he was on the computer, he noticed Andre had slipped down the sofa, ending directly across from Alexandra. The two of them were speaking German and then switched to French. Laughing. Drinking wine. A half hour later and Jake had downloaded more data than he could go over in a week. But he didn’t have a week. He’d used Anna’s access to Interpol many times, with and without her permission, so he knew his way around. He also knew how to have their computer analyze the data in various strings. While that was going on in the background, Jake quickly checked on a few names that had come up. Names that he’d recognized from his past. His computer beeped when the Interpol analysis was complete. But Jake’s brain had reached the same notion about thirty seconds before the computer. All of the dead men, from those who killed Anna to the man he’d killed at his apartment in Innsbruck, to the men who’d come for him in St. Johann, and to the Iranian Kurds who’d tried to kill him that morning—it had all been a grand ruse to make him believe the hit had been ordered by someone from a former case. Well, the computer didn’t actually say that. The program simply showed no relationship among all the men, and no likely coordinated attempt. Someone wanted Jake to look into the Kurds as a source, or perhaps the Serbs, or even Gunter Schecht, who was dead. By doing so, the real source of the hit, the one pulling the strings, was someone as far from those sources as possible. Sleight of hand. Have him look one way while the knife sticks him in the back. Or, more likely, the bullet. But that was also disturbing, because only certain people knew about these cases in their totality. And that list wasn’t as long as one would guess. A list that Jake would have to deal with alone. He should’ve come to this conclusion a long time ago. Perhaps he would have if his mind wasn’t thinking about the death of Anna, and his body wasn’t constantly being attacked. That was the play. Much like Andre and his chess. You make a player think you’re working your way in to put the opponent in check or mate, they let down their guard, and you steal their queen. You keep picking away like that until they have no more defenses left to protect their king. Time to take a few more pieces. Other than pawns. Go on offense, Jake.

  17

  Early evening now, and Toni drove her rental Opel along the German Autobahn near Martinislautern. She exited at the Ramstein Air Base exit and then slowly drove along the priority road toward the front gate of the American Air Force Base. She’d gotten a call from the CIA director, Kurt Jenkins, earlier in the day, telling her to pick up a package at the base Office of Special Investigations detachment. She’d been on the sprawling Ramstein many times while working in Europe, but hadn’t been given any indication as to what she was picking up. Most communications in the Agency now were not only highly encrypted, they were easily downloaded to hand-held devices, which Toni carried at all times. However, she also knew that her boss, Kurt Jenkins, was a bit old school and liked to maintain some of the old communications methods. Couriers were still important to him—especially if he felt other methods had been compromised in some way.

  She signed Franz Martini onto the base and they proceeded to the OSI detachment building.

  “What do you suppose they have for you here?” Franz asked her solemnly.

  Toni had a feeling it was a package of information. Something she could have just as well accessed with her computer. “I don’t know,” she said. “Intel I’d guess.”

  They’d discussed all afternoon what to do—try to follow Jake and hopefully catch up with him, or move in another direction. Part of her wanted to drop Franz off at the nearest airport and let him fly back to Austria. His health seemed to be deteriorating by the minute. His coughing had forced them to go to a pharmacy in Trier and get him a suppressant, which he was sucking down like an early-morning alcoholic takes down his first drink of the day.

  She pulled in front of the OSI building and parked. A sign out front said ‘No Smoking Within 100 Feet of Building.’

  “I’m sure that means outside,” Toni assured him. “They won’t let you inside anyway. So why don’t you stay here and have a smoke while I retrieve whatever’s here for me.”

  He nodded agreement.

  Getting out, she saw him light up as she rounded the front of the car. Although she’d said he could smoke in the car with her, he’d refrained from doing so. Smoking seemed to be the man’s only pleasure in life and she had no desire to take that from him.

  After going through security inside, she was escorted to the office of the OSI detachment commander, a man in his early thirties with a full beard and long hair in a ponytail. He stood and shook her hand before slumping back into his leather task chair. The office had no windows and appeared to be in the exact center of the building, with sound-deadening walls much like the conference room at the German Intelligence building near Munich. She remained standing.

  Toni glanced about the office for any package of size that might have come from the Agency. “Where’s my package?” she asked the commander.

  He moved a few pieces of paper and produced a sealed folder the size of a DVD. He handed it to her and looked eager for her to open it there in front of him. It was in a standard diplomatic envelope with Kurt Jenkins’s familiar signature across the seal. Inside, she knew, would be a DVD carefully sealed further in an airtight plastic like a freezer bag. It would have survived a plane crash packaged like that.

  “Must be pretty important,” the OSI officer said, “to be flown in here on an F22.”

  She didn’t take the bait. “It’s a mix CD from my boyfriend. Yeah, we’ve been having a few problems and he likes to make grand gestures. Thanks for your help.” She left him there pulling on his beard.

  By the time she got back outside, smoke filled the inside of her car, making it look like it was on fire. She opened the door and let air flow for a moment.

  “You forgot to leave me the key,” Franz said. “Couldn’t open the window.” He glanced at the package. “That’s all?”

  “Afraid so.” She took a seat behind the wheel and thought for a moment. She needed to view whatever was on this DVD alone. Her cell phone rang and she checked to see who it was. Kurt Jenkins.

  She flipped open her secure phone and said, “Yeah.”

  “You got the package, I understand,” Jenkins said.

  “Sure did.”

  “You need to go over the data immediately. I’ve reserved two rooms for you at Air Force Billeting. Yours will be one visiting dignitaries normally use—colonels and general officers. You can review the information there. Give me a call once you’re done.”

  “Got it
. Anything else?”

  “Our friend is still in France. At least as far as we know. We’re guessing he won’t change transportation, since he’ll want his guns.”

  “With the money he has,” she said, “he could charter a flight. But we don’t even know where he’s going.”

  “Check out the DVD.”

  “All right.”

  They both hung up.

  “Everything okay?” Franz asked.

  “You don’t mind staying here tonight, do you?”

  “Not at all. But I could use a drink.”

  Toni cranked over the car. “I hear that.”

  Twenty minutes later and Toni had dropped Franz off at his base hotel room, where he planned on taking a nap before the two of them would go to the officers’ club for dinner and drinks. Meanwhile, Toni brought her laptop and set it up on her bed, letting it warm up as she stretched for a moment. She’d been locked up in the car for the past few days and felt constricted. What she really needed was a quick run or a long walk.

  She broke the seal on the package and cut the DVD out of the inner plastic wrap. When she slid the DVD into her computer, the first thing that happened was a video image starting up. It was simply Kurt Jenkins sitting behind his desk talking to her, explaining that they had a number of analysts going through the data and would continue to do so. He was concerned about a leak of some type. Not on his end, but somewhere with their European partners.

  “We still don’t know why someone wants Jake dead, but we think we’re getting closer,” Jenkins said. “This could be classic deception. So far there have been Kurdish Turks, Serbs, and now Iranian Kurds coming after Jake. That doesn’t even include the Eastern Europeans who killed his girlfriend two months ago. As you know, Jake was involved in the past with the Kurds, and they have long memories. However, it’s more likely that this is a ruse of some sort. If you send someone to assassinate another, you want someone with no possible ties to you. So a German might send a Chinese agent. But you know this. Then, I’m guessing, they knew that Jake would kill some of them and have law enforcement after him. They counted on this.”

  She paused the video. Of course. She’d been so stupid. Concentrating on finding Jake and not even considering who was after him. Or why. Whereas she should have been seeking the source. She started the DVD again.

  Jenkins continued. “That way they could monitor the progress and perhaps direct more assets. Then, once the deed was done, they would send someone to kill the killers. There would never be a payout of the million Euros. Review the data files and then call me on your secure cell. Alone.”

  The video faded to black and the screen went to a set of file folders. She clicked on the folder labeled ‘The Dead.’ Inside was a folder for each man who’d been killed so far, from the two men two months ago that Jake had killed when Anna was murdered, to those two Jake had shot in France that morning.

  She started at the beginning. Within an hour she’d read everything known about all of the dead men. It was truly an international affair, from the Hungarian and Bulgarian Jake killed two months ago to the Iranian he last had contact with in France. That man had been somewhat interesting, with his degree from the University of Michigan. Nothing was jumping out and leading her in any significant direction, though. Could it have simply been hired guns from all these various countries on purpose to drive the Agency and Jake in different directions? A ruse to confuse? That’s what she’d have to find out.

  But by now her stomach was starting to rumble. She took out the DVD, put on her leather coat, and slid the disc into an inside pocket. Time for a little dinner and drinks.

  18

  Berlin, Germany

  Much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Since Gustav had instructed his associate to try to connect the dots with the bodies found in Berlin to possible missing persons and those to murders elsewhere, Andreas had possibly come up with something important. A man had been shot in Prague three weeks ago, and a week later a body had shown up in the Spree. The medical examiner had estimated the time of death to be five or six days prior to the find, which would have been a couple of days after the Prague killing. It wasn’t much to go on, Gustav knew, but it was a direction. Especially with the possibility that the Turk had tried to kill Jake Adams in Innsbruck and then could have tried to cash in on the hit in Berlin just after that. The clincher? The man who was killed in Prague was a former spy with UZSI, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Czech Republic. Which is why Andreas and Gustav hadn’t been able to get much information on the death of the man. The authorities there had simply called it a street crime. A robbery gone bad. But Gustav wasn’t buying that explanation.

  Now, just after ten p.m., Gustav sat in the main terminal at the Hauptbahnhof watching the big board click off arrivals and departures. When he finally saw the train he wanted coming into Berlin from Warsaw, Poland, he spoke softly into his mic to send his officers into action. Then he got up and with a casual gate went to the platform to wait. He saw Andreas on the far end of the track platform, making sure nobody would escape down that way. His other officers formed a barricade, their MP5s intimidating and ensuring everyone would stop and hand over their passports.

  They’d gotten only a number on the passengers. No names. With over 150 onboard, it might take a while to check on all of them. But their men had a hand scanner, which would not only verify the identity of each passenger, it would also run the data into a computer inside the terminal and run a quick background check for any outstanding Interpol notices or even local warrants by law enforcement in their home countries. The process worked better than planned. Quick and efficient. However, they only found a few with traffic violations and one man wanted for rape in Warsaw, who his men took into custody. When each passenger was cleared, a sticker was slapped onto their passport.

  Once all the passengers ran through their gauntlet, Andreas met Gustav on the platform.

  “I was so sure we would find something,” Andreas said.

  “We might have,” Gustav said, his eyes shifting toward the passengers who were now dispersing in all directions through the terminal.

  “True. The RFID sticker in the passport was brilliant.”

  “Well, that only works after the fact,” Gustav assured his partner. “It’s not like we can track all of them.”

  “Why do you think the killer would be on this train tonight?”

  While tracking mysterious murders in Europe, Andreas had come across the shooting death of an older man in Warsaw a day ago. That man had also been part of the old spy community, having worked for the Polish Foreign Intelligence Service. A check with German Intelligence confirmed that the Pole had also worked for quite some time in Berlin during the height of the Cold War.

  Gustav wasn’t entirely sure of his answer, but he had a big hunch. “The timing seems right, Andreas. But we don’t know anything for sure. We’re flying blind here.”

  “You’re right, boss. And we don’t know if the shooter just passed through here. We might assume the Warsaw killer would have a clean record.”

  “Absolutely. It would help, though, if we could break into the website. Any word on how long that will take?”

  Andreas shoved his hands into his pockets and said, “No, sir. We’re not even sure of the city where it’s hosted. They’re trying. I have a couple programmers working all night to break it.”

  “Good.”

  “Now what?”

  Gustav thought about the rest of his evening and smiled ever so slightly.

  “You have plans with a lady friend,” Andreas stated.

  “Maybe. There’s nothing else we can do until morning when the next train from Warsaw comes in. You should go home to your wife.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll check on our computer friends before I go to bed and call you if they’ve found anything.”

  Gustav checked his watch. “Give me a few hours of privacy.”

  Andreas nodded and then left.

  Shaking
his head with wonder, Gustav wandered off to his car. It took him thirty minutes to drive from the main train terminal to his apartment on the west side of Berlin, a few blocks from the old Olympic stadium and just a block from the Spree River. He locked his car and walked with a spring in his step toward his row house apartment. He lived on the second story of the three story brick building, his apartment with a view of the Spree and a large park.

  When he got to his door, he hesitated a moment, digging in his pocket for the keys. Something wasn’t right about this whole case, he thought. The deaths were quickly drifting to a realm that was not his.

  Suddenly the door opened and the young woman stood before him in the silk robe he’d bought her for her birthday last month. Her blonde hair shot straight down over her shoulders. Her cheek bones became more pronounced when she smiled without showing him her imperfect teeth, which bothered her. Regardless, she was a stunning beauty. Her perfect body made up for any superficial imperfections, and might make a gay man question his decision to swing that way.

  She opened her robe and exposed that nude, wondrous body to him. “I was hoping you would come soon.”

  Gustav moved past her and closed and locked the door behind them. “Oh, I will.” Seeing her like that had brought a great rise to his evening.

  They hurried to the bedroom and he got out of his clothes like they were on fire. The first time he’d met Ilka six months ago, she was working for a high-end call service out of a high-rise posh hotel near Tempelhof. Her “client” had died from an aortic aneurysm and Gustav was there to verify there was no foul play. Seeing Ilka, he guessed immediately that she could have induced a heart attack in a marathon runner. She’d taken to Gustav after that for unknown reasons to him, and he’d taken to her for two reasons—one was the obvious physical attraction, and the other out of some guilty Catholic pattern of possible redemption. He’d done the same thing with Kora in Munich, and she was now out of the business and owned a dress shop in Berchtesgaden. One success out of a million crashed and failed attempts.