Without Options

by Trevor Scott

  Once Jake got toward the entrance of the hotel, he slid the shirt down to his neck like an ascot, stuffing the ends down into his leather jacket.

  Avoiding the front desk, Jake went directly to the elevator. When he got off on the second floor, he punched all the other elevator buttons before leaving.

  He was shaking from the excitement of the last half hour. This case had become much more complex than he’d first thought. Was he or Anna the actual target in Austria? The more and more he thought about it, he had to have been the intended target. But then why had someone not killed him while he rehabbed in the hospital. He was an easy target then.

  Getting to his room, he hesitated. On the floor was a tiny piece of paper he’d wedged in the door so he would know if someone had gone inside while he was away. A cheap trick.

  He glanced down both sides of the hallway. Nothing.

  He pulled his gun and opened the door. Then he rushed in, his gun aiming his way and centering on the figure laying in his bed. A split second is all he had to shoot or not shoot, his heart racing.

  Jake quickly lowered his gun.

  “What the hell?” Jake said. “You were supposed to come here tomorrow morning. I almost shot you.”

  Alexandra Schecht slid her legs to the floor and said, “I knew your reactions were better than that.” She rushed to him and wrapped herself around him.

  He embraced her also, glad she’d come tonight. “Why the change of plan?”

  She pulled away from him a foot. “The Service wants me to try to collect on the hit in Baden-Baden. I’m to coordinate my attempt tomorrow with officers from our Berlin office. There’s more to this than I realized, Jake.” Her breaths heaved her chest with each word, her nipples protruding against her thin white silk shirt, enticing Jake. She took his hand and brought it to her breast, and she moaned with his touch.

  He took off his jacket, dropping it to the floor, his bare chest accented by his empty leather holster. She gasped suddenly.

  “What?”

  “You’re bleeding. How’d that happen?”

  Glancing at his left arm, he saw that a bullet had cut through his flesh. Why hadn’t he noticed it when he took off his shirt to put over his head? Adrenalin.

  “It’s nothing. I’ll explain later.” He picked up his leather coat and put his finger through a hole on two sides. “Damn. My new jacket.”

  She went to the bathroom and found a wash cloth, which she soaked with cold water and placed over the wound, and then cleaned it with a rub.

  “Hey, that’s an open wound,” Jake protested.

  “Don’t be a baby.”

  Jake sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, as long as you’re being a nurse tonight, I could use a complete sponge bath.”

  “How about an enema?”

  “I don’t go that way.”

  She examined the rip in his skin. “The bleeding has stopped.”

  “Of course, the blood has flowed elsewhere.”

  Smiling, Alexandra grasped Jake’s belt and deftly unhooked it. “I better check the rest of your body to make sure you have no other mystery wounds.”

  Jake stood and let her undress him. “If you must.”

  When she saw him engorged like that, she hurried to remove her own clothes. The first time came quickly for both of them, their bodies meshing together in a fast, passionate release. The second time they paced their movements, examining the body of each other.

  A good while later, they lay naked together in bed, her head nuzzled against his broad chest.

  “Now will you tell me about your cut on your arm?” she asked, her voice softer than he ever remembered. As if she was finally herself with him.

  He explained his conversation with the former Stasi officer and the hit attempt by the young couple.

  “I’ve heard of Hartmann,” she said. “He was quite brutal back in the day. You should have let them kill the man.”

  “Maybe. But their tactics were flawed. Perhaps they would have gotten better with age.”

  “Too late now.”

  “Right.” He felt a little guilty about shooting them, even though they would have killed him in an instant if he hadn’t reacted. Yet, he could’ve simply gone down the elevator and let nature take its course.

  “They should have slowed and let you go downstairs before making their move.”

  “Better yet,” Jake said. “The woman should have said she forgot something in their apartment, letting them go back in the other direction until I was gone.”

  “Why the woman?”

  “Did I not mention she was blonde?”

  Alexandra slapped him on the chest. “So that’s the true Jake Adams.”

  “Okay. The man forgot his car keys. You satisfied now?”

  She rubbed her hand along his chest. “Very satisfied.” Her eyes rose to his. “Where do we go from here?”

  “To the meet. But we have to decide who takes the lead. If you’re going to have some friends show up, that could be a problem. I might get shot in the crossfire.”

  She slapped his chest again. “I meant with us.”

  “Oh.” How the hell did he answer that without saying the wrong thing? Don’t delay too long, Jake. “I think we should figure that out once this case is over. If we over think it now, our judgment might be compromised.”

  Thinking for a moment, she said, “I agree. But I want you to know I am ubersmitten.”

  “Auch.”

  She raised her head up and kissed him on the lips.

  ●

  Anton Zukov’s cell phone buzzed in his pants as he drove his Audi A3 in light traffic along a quiet boulevard near the Tegeler See in Berlin’s northwest. He was looking for a good place to drop a body in the dark. Someplace with light traffic in late evening, and he found just that along the western shore of the lake. It wouldn’t help him immediately, since that meeting would be taken by his associate Nikolai, but he was always trying to stay a few steps ahead of the game.

  Finally getting the phone from his pocket, he immediately flipped it open when he saw the most recent number flash for Viktor. “How can I help my good friend?” he asked in Russian.

  “Where are you?”

  “Driving in the northwest. What’s going on?”

  “Two things. First, a couple of our people were killed near Alexanderplatz.”

  “Who?”

  “The local couple.”

  Zukov tried to picture their faces. The husband and wife team had been recruited in Leipzig a couple of years ago—the husband a former Germany Army private who’d done his conscription with little fanfare and great dissolution, and his anarchist wife—too hot for the Army man but nearly too crazy for Zukov to even consider screwing. And that was saying something.

  “I thought we were holding them back for something else?” Zukov said with true wonder. He slowed his car at a stop sign and waited. Nobody was coming from any direction.

  “We were,” Viktor said, disturbed. “They went freelance after our Stasi friend.”

  “What? He wasn’t assigned for two weeks. Not until your friend, the American, was taken out.”

  “I’m aware of this. I set the schedule.”

  “Of course.” This would throw off his own schedule and that wasn’t good. He liked to move his pieces on the board on his terms. But then their boss had ordered them to move the process forward quicker anyway. “Was our Stasi friend hurt?”

  “Not a scratch.”

  “He’s still good.”

  “He didn’t fire a shot. A man matching Jake Adams’s description was seen entering the building.”

  Great. “He’s here.” Deep in the back of his mind he had a feeling Adams was going by the name Remus, and would try to collect on Vladimir Volkov’s death.

  “He doesn’t leave anything to chance.”

  “I’ll bet he was after our Stasi friend for information, not to kill him.”

  “I agree. I’ll let you know more when I know.”

  S
ensing his boss was about to hang up, Zukov said, “You said you had two things to tell me.”

  A car pulled up behind Zukov, so he pulled out to the right and continued along the north shore of the lake.

  “Right. About the meeting tomorrow. Our American friend has to be Remus. And he’s not the only one to claim responsibility for Baden-Baden. There are two others.”

  “What? We know that man was there, caught on video.” In fact, they weren’t sure that the man in the video was Jake Adams. But it did look like him.

  “I know. The other two also have the information, though.”

  That was a dilemma. “Will you take out all three?”

  “No other choice,” Viktor said. “There’s no money.”

  Zukov laughed. “You sure you want me to simply observe?”

  “Yes. This could be a feign move.”

  That’s what Zukov was thinking. “Understand. We’ll go as planned then.”

  Viktor hung up and Zukov shut his phone, setting it in a cup holder on the console. Maybe he could convince Viktor to allow him to bring along a sniper rifle. Just in case. He smiled with that thought and picked up speed.

  ●

  It took Gustav Vogler nearly an hour to get to the crime scene near Alexanderplatz. He’d been at his desk in deep thought on his computer, going over the case files one more time. The first Polizei officers to arrive at the scene in the apartment complex thought it was a bungled robbery, with the apartment dweller protecting himself. But when they noticed the silenced guns and finally ran the apartment owner’s name through their system and found out the man had been a notorious Stasi officer, they’d decided to call in Gustav and his team.

  Now, on the third floor of the apartment building, Gustav and his associate Andreas had the former Stasi man back in his bedroom while the crime scene investigators collected evidence, took photographs, and finally bagged the two dead shooters.

  Gustav glanced at the one-page briefing on the man’s background and then said, “You say you’ve never seen those two killed outside your door before?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And they were trying to kill you?”

  “I don’t know,” Bernard Hartman said. “I heard shots and eventually opened my door. They were laying there dead. Someone had shot them.”

  “Just like that.” Gustav snapped his fingers.

  The old Stasi man shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head simultaneously.

  Gustav thought about the consequences of this hit. He guessed that there would have been another body showing up somewhere in Berlin in the next day or two. That is if the young couple had been successful. And if that had been a man and a woman it would have thrown their original investigation into an entirely new direction. It would have been the first woman. But then there were probably not a lot of female hit women.

  “Who killed the young couple?” Gustav asked, his tone changing from congenial to gruff.

  “I don’t know,” the former Stasi said.

  The man appeared to be telling the truth, but Gustav knew the man had been trained in interrogation deception by the best in the business. He could beat and torture the man and get nothing. Gustav glanced at his partner, who shook his head slightly. They’d get nothing from him. They left him there and went out into the outer corridor, where the medical team had already bagged the bodies.

  Gustav pulled his partner toward the elevators and said, “What do you think?”

  “He’s lying. But did you happen to catch the spent casings out here in the hallway? Forty cal. And I’ll bet they match those found in Baden-Baden.”

  Nodding his head in agreement, Gustav pushed the down button and waited. “Good observation, Andreas. Which means we should be on the lookout for another body dropping somewhere in our fine city in the next day or so.” But this time they’d have no opportunity to check on trains or any other mode of transportation. The possibilities of routes and modes of transport from Baden-Baden to Berlin were nearly endless. Besides, the hit man was already here in Berlin. All they could do was try to beef up patrols in dark areas around Berlin—a city where shadows had always cast wide, hiding those who didn’t want to be found.

  ●

  Toni and Franz traveled much of the day from Bonn to Berlin, stopping often for food and bathroom breaks. She was in no real hurry. She knew she’d have to coordinate her efforts with the local Agency office, the station chief headquartered at the American Embassy in Berlin. Her concern for Franz had grown, though. His coughing up of blood had increased and she guessed he was fighting his own death with every good cell left in his body. Why? Because he needed to get to the bottom of Anna’s murder. It was his last case and he knew it. But he had to finish at the top of his game and she sure as hell wasn’t going to stop him. If anything, she’d make sure of his success. And her own. Even though she and Jake had divorced a long time ago, she still had feelings for him.

  A few hours ago she and Franz checked into a hotel near Tempelhof International Airport, the one-time hub for the Berlin Airlift and home to the American military presence for decades.

  Now, nearing midnight, Toni sat alone watching the local news. There’d been a shooting on the east side of Berlin, near the Alexanderplatz, where a young man and woman were killed. The reporters speculated, with no attribution whatsoever, that it had been drug related. Toni guessed the locals liked to hear that. Random shootings were both rare and unnerving. The message? Stay away from drugs and you won’t be shot.

  Toni’s phone buzzed and she checked the number before picking up. It was her boss, Kurt Jenkins, the CIA director. “Hi, Kurt. What’s the news?”

  “Where are you?”

  She told him the hotel in Berlin and added, “Yes, Franz Martini is still with me.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Much better,” she lied. “He’s just contrary enough to kick cancer’s ass.”

  “Let’s hope so. Are you alone?”

  “Come on. He’s old enough to be my father.”

  “That’s not what I meant. And you failed to mention that you were married.”

  “I didn’t think I’d still have to tell you the obvious,” she scolded. “Who do you have for me locally? And don’t give me any more post-pubescent Army pukes. I need someone with some pull in Berlin.”

  “I understand. How about Hank Roberts?”

  “The station chief? That would be great.”

  “You two have some history, right?”

  He knew the answer to that. She and Hank had worked together many times when she was station chief in Vienna and Hank was in Hungary.

  “Yeah, he’s a good guy. Anyone else?”

  “He’s running a little thin right now,” Kurt said. “Most of his officers are at a meeting in Brussels. Hank stayed back because his wife is about to drop kid number three.”

  “Is that wife number two?”

  “Number three.”

  “Wow, I’m behind.”

  “I’ll have him meet you at the hotel for breakfast at nine.”

  Toni watched the TV as the director talked. When she saw the image of a man running with a gun, she turned up the volume. “Just a minute.”

  The reporter now speculated on a shooting in Baden-Baden that had happened the day before, showing the image of a man leaving an apartment complex there over and over. Although the face wasn’t in perfect view, Toni knew the man. Jake. And he had a limp from the knee replacement. She lowered the volume.

  “Everything all right,” Kurt asked.

  “Yeah, no problem. I’ll meet Hank tomorrow. Anything else?”

  “Should I mention your Austrian friend to Hank?”

  “Jake?”

  “No. Franz Martini.”

  “Absolutely. Franz also has contacts here in Berlin I plan on exploiting.”

  Kurt Jenkins thanked her for her good work, which she knew was sketchy at best, and then they both hung up.

  She lay back onto the bed, her thoughts
going to Jake. What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time, my friend? If only she’d known about Jake and Anna being shot a couple months ago, maybe she could have gotten ahead of the situation and found out who was the intended target, who’d ordered the hit, and why they wanted either of them dead. Now she was playing catch up, just trying to stay ahead of the bullets. But Jake seemed to be a mile ahead of her. He was right in the thick of things. Like normal. Go to sleep, Toni. Tomorrow will be a long day.

  28

  Jake slipped out of his hotel after Alexandra was sound asleep, making his way by U-Bahn to a nice neighborhood in the west part of Berlin near the expansive Tiergarten.

  Wearing all black, he walked the last portion of his journey in a light rain. A mist. Then he found the brick, three-story row houses in a posh area, occupied, Jake knew, by mostly diplomats from many different countries. An international school sat two blocks away. The children of these diplomats didn’t have to go far to school or to play in green open spaces.

  Security was fairly high, but the systems weren’t infallible. So when Jake came to his target house, one of the nicer houses in the row, he quickly went to work disabling the system and entering through the back alley entrance. Once inside, he stopped and removed his shoes, which were wet and would squeak on the wooden floors.

  Now, on the second floor master suite, Jake sat in a chair next to the large bed, his gun out, the barrel itching his aching replaced knee. In the bed, the two people lay sleeping, the man’s breathing somewhat uneven, and the woman on her side facing away.

  Jake thought of the best way to approach the man, but there really was no good way to wake a dangerous man from his sleep. He just needed to try not to make too much noise. A hand over the mouth? Too much? A gentle nudge? Maybe.

  Without more thought, Jake simply reached over and took the man’s hand, his gun hand, and held it tight. When the man’s eyes opened and realized it wasn’t his wife holding him, he panicked for a split second. Until Jake put the barrel of his gun to his lips and said “Shhhh.”