by Trevor Scott
Her Service was expecting her to set up a meeting for tomorrow, coordinated with the BND office in Berlin. But she’d put them off, saying the meeting was changed.
He didn’t have a choice. “They’ll be watching me get out. Let’s just stick with the plan.”
Stopping along the deserted street, Jake started to open the door but she grabbed his arm and stopped him. Pulling him back to her, she planted a long kiss on his lips. “You be careful, Jake.”
He nodded and got out, closing the door behind him.
Alexandra pulled away slowly and soon had wound around a corner, still following the river.
The air was cold and damp as Jake walked toward the river along the concrete. The area had once been used to offload barges with something, probably coal, and hadn’t seen the revitalization money from the reunification of Germany in the 90s.
He could hear and smell the river ahead, the lights from more affluent areas across the river shone on the surface, his only light source. As he approached his contact point, he tried to remember everything he’d noticed earlier in the day. There was almost no place for anyone to hide here. It was the perfect meeting place from their point of view. For Jake it couldn’t have been less favorable. He was out in the open. Cornered against the river. No cover from the shooter. It was places just like this throughout the city where bodies had been found, shot to death from close range. That was Jake’s only optimistic point. At least the shooter killed from close in and not with a high-powered rifle. He hoped they wouldn’t change their pattern now, because he needed to talk with this guy. Unlike the men who’d come for him in Austria, this guy would know something about something.
Exposed and isolated, Jake stuffed his hands into his pockets for warmth.
Suddenly a soft shuffling shook his attention toward the Spree. Moving just his eyes, he caught the shape of a large rat about the size of a cat scurry along the edge of the water wall. Jesus he hated rats.
He was near shivering a half hour later when he heard the sputtering car come off the main road a hundred meters away and angle toward him. The guy knew it was cold and wanted Jake’s muscles to be stiff and non-reactive. Exactly what he would have done.
The car caught Jake in its headlights and came right toward him before squealing to a halt just ten feet in front of him, cutting the lights so those passing by on the road, which were few, wouldn’t see them there. The tired engine shut down, and Jake thought it might never start again.
With the lights out, Jake could see the car better. It was an older dark BMW. Probably charcoal or black. He could also see the silhouette of the driver and perhaps nobody else in the car, unless they were crouching down.
The driver’s door opened but no overhead light came on. A tall man stepped out and stamped the last of a cigarette into the concrete. The door remained open, the man behind it. He looked too young to be at this meeting.
“Throw your gun into the river,” the man said, his accent clearly Russian.
“Screw you!”
“You want your money, you do as I say.”
Crap. Jake guessed it might come to this. Did he have a choice? Yeah, he had a choice. He could just continue to tell this guy to go screw himself and head back to Innsbruck. But then more men would continue to come. How many could he kill? Would he finally slip up?
“This is an expensive gun,” Jake said.
“A million Euros could buy a lot more,” the Russian declared.
“Yeah, but this one has sentimental value.” All of his guns had been like friends to him.
The Russian started to get back into the car.
“All right,” Jake yelled. “I thought Russians had patience.” He reached to his right side and removed the Glock from his hip holster. With one reluctant back throw, he sent that gun into the dark water of the Spree.
“Now the other one,” the Russian demanded.
If he got rid of that one, he could be in trouble. He’d only have one left. “First you show me the money.” Jake took a couple steps toward the Russian.
The man pulled a gun from behind the door and aimed it at Jake. “I said to get rid of your other gun.”
“I do that and you shoot me,” Jake reasoned.
“You don’t do it and I shoot you. A conundrum.”
Running possible scenarios through his mind, Jake stalled for time. “Just like you killed the others?”
“You have no clue, Mister Adams.”
So he knew his real name and not just his code name, Remus. “That’s what my fifth grade teacher used to tell me. Yet, he ended up dying a poor public servant. That won’t be me.”
“The gun.”
This guy was starting to piss him off. Yet, Jake knew he was only a messenger at best and a shooter at worst. He needed to work his way farther up the food chain.
“All right,” Jake agreed. He reached into his leather jacket and started to pull the gun out.
“Very slowly,” the Russian demanded.
Cocked and ready to fire, Jake did just the opposite. He started to move his hand slowly, but then shifted his body swiftly to his right, aimed and fired in one motion and then rolled to the concrete.
Jake’s first rounds smashed through the door window, shocking the man, and at least one bullet hitting him and dropping him to the ground.
Now, both men on the ground, the Russian returned fire at Jake. But Jake rolled more and fired a couple times, trying his best not to kill the guy.
Vectored favorably now, Jake took aim and fired twice, striking the Russian in the left leg. The man grasped hold of the wound, his gun dropping to the concrete.
Jake didn’t hesitate. He jumped to his feet and ran at the guy, his gun leading the way and ready to fire. But Jake didn’t want to and didn’t have to fire again. He simply picked up the man’s gun and flung it into the river. Then Jake checked the man for more weapons, finding a knife strapped to his right leg, which he pulled out and thought about throwing. Instead, he held it tightly in his left hand, his right hand holding the gun aimed at the man.
“Now,” Jake started. “You’re going to tell me about my one million Euros.”
The man was in obvious pain, with one hand holding the wound on his left thigh and the other on a hole in his gut. There was no way he would survive, Jake knew. He’d hit the man’s femoral artery. Just like Anna had been shot.
“Screw your mother,” the Russian said in his native tongue.
“My mother’s dead,” Jake lied, surprising the man. “You have about ten minutes before you bleed out from that leg wound. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes. Take away the pain.”
The Russian grit his teeth from the pain. “There is no money.”
“No shit. But you’re going to tell me who set this whole scheme up. And why.”
“Why? If I’m already dead.”
He had a point. Jake threw the knife into the river and then checked the man over and found his passport. He looked at the name and address and then rubbed the passport in the man’s blood, waved it dry, before folding it and shoving it in his back pocket.
“You have anyone you want me to give your last words to?” Jake asked him sincerely.
Without thinking, the Russian said a woman’s name. His sister. “Tell her I love her.”
“I will,” Jake promised. “Just before I kill her. Or maybe after.”
“Screw your mother.”
“Have we not determined that impossibility? Five minutes, my friend. You tell me what I need to know and I tell your sister all kinds of nice things about you.”
The Russian tightened his jaw.
“A name and location.”
Finally, the Russian forced out, “Viktor Pushkin.”
Something clicked in Jake’s mind. He knew a Russian named Pushkin. “Any relation to Colonel Yuri Pushkin?”
The man’s breathing became labored. “What do you think?”
Crap. Jake knew Yuri had a couple brothers
and at least one sister. “Who does Viktor work for?”
“Take a guess?”
“No. I want to hear it from you.”
But the man’s eyes started to close. Jake kicked him in the good leg. “Wake up.”
“What do you want?”
“Who does he work for and how do I find him?”
The Russian mumbled and Jake got closer to hear him.
“Say again,” Jake demanded.
The Russian said what Jake thought he would. The SVR. He also muttered a location, but Jake wasn’t sure if that was correct. Then the Russian drifted off, his muscles relaxing completely, and the only sound that of blood moving about the man’s torso.
●
Anton Zukov pulled his eyes away from the night vision scope and set the butt of the sniper rifle onto the ground. Positioned on the higher ground two hundred meters away, he could have easily taken out Jake Adams at any time. But he had his orders and he was nothing if not reliably obedient. Still, he had to muster every bit of strength in his body to not squeeze off a round and blow that American’s head off his shoulders.
As he packed up his rifle and hauled it to the trunk of his Audi, he thought about their young man Nikolai. He should have never been allowed to meet with Adams. The American was far too experienced for Nikolai. Yet, he could never bring that up with Viktor. Nikolai’s tactics were not completely flawed, but his reactions were slow. He should have anticipated the American would not throw away his last weapon. In fact, Jake Adams probably still had a third gun somewhere on his body. Maybe at his ankle.
He got into his car and thought for a moment, his hand shifting his watch cap into a more favorable position on his head. Maybe Viktor would give him the job now. He’d tried calling his boss to get the shoot order after Nikolai had been shot, but for some reason Viktor wasn’t picking up. He started his car and reluctantly took off.
31
Toni and Franz waited back along the edge of the small park off of Leipziger Strasse at the edge of Berlin’s Mitte and Kreuzberg areas. She thought it a strange location for a meet to drop off one million Euros, and even worse for a place to kill a man instead of paying out the money for a hit. But that’s where the instructions had led them. In fact, after the meeting with the Polizei homicide detective earlier in the day, she should’ve known the location was wrong. Most of the other killings had been in remote industrial areas on the east side of the river. Except for the Turk and the Polish man recently. Maybe they’d changed their pattern.
Now it was an hour after the midnight meet time. She’d been sent on a wild goose chase. Damn it. Jake had done this to her, she was sure. Even though she wasn’t certain how he could have changed the location. Her mind reeled back to the server in Frankfurt. Somehow Jake had gotten into that system and sent the location. He was capable, there was no doubt about that. But why would he do it? As her eyes gazed out into the darkness, she realized why. He wanted to keep anyone else from dying or getting involved. Jake knew others would take advantage of the situation, just as he was planning to do, and could either get in his way or get killed.
“What happened?” Franz asked Toni, his tone subdued and his throat horse from coughing and smoking.
“Jake happened.” She explained her theory to Franz. How she figured Jake had changed the meeting location.
He shook his head. “Sounds like something Jake would do. So, where is he really at this moment?”
That was Toni’s problem. If she had to guess, Jake was in trouble. More trouble than even he knew. “I don’t know. Could you call your Polizei friend and see what he knows?”
Franz didn’t answer. He simply flipped open his cell phone, punched a speed dial and waited. He talked for a moment in German and shook his head as he closed the phone. “Let’s go. There’s been a shooting east of the river.” He relayed the initial directions and Toni sped off.
“Did they say who was shot?” she asked, her mind immediately focusing on Jake.
Franz lit another cigarette and said through the side of his mouth, “He had no identification.”
My God, she thought. Could it be Jake?
“They think it was a Russian.”
“How?”
“Based on his watch and dental work.”
Franz continued to direct Toni toward the shooting site. With the light traffic at that time of night, it still took them more than twenty minutes to reach the site of the shooting. The Polizei had already set up lights and crime scene tape, keeping back the media and gawkers. Two Polizei boats cruised out in the river as if searching for more bodies. The Polizei homicide investigator Toni had met that afternoon, Herr Vogler, strolled up to the passenger side of her car and Franz opened the window for him.
“You got one of those for me?” Herr Vogler asked Franz in German, who flipped the pack for the Polizei man and he started to grab a cigarette but stopped. Instead, he simply pulled a piece of gum from his pocket and shoved it into his mouth. “Trying to stop,” he explained.
“Anything interesting since we talked?” Franz asked.
“Glass by the body. Looks like the man was shot through his car window. Probably used it as a shield. But not good enough to stop a bullet.”
“What caliber?” Toni asked, sticking with German.
“Forty cal,” Vogler said, pointing back toward the river. “Same as Baden-Baden. Same as Alexanderplatz. Found the spent casings over there. Looks like the shooter was standing there and then hit the ground and shot some more. But there’s no blood, so it doesn’t appear he was hit. Our victim was hit once in the stomach and again in the leg. The femoral artery. He didn’t have a chance.”
“Who owns the car?” Toni asked.
“It was reported stolen from a restaurant a few weeks ago,” the Berlin Polizei man said.
Damn it. Jake was here and she should have been as well. How would she find him now?
“How did you get here so fast?” Franz asked.
The Polizei man smiled and took in a deep breath, then continued his assault on the gum. “Someone across the river heard the shots. Called it in.”
“Are the boats searching for a gun?” Toni asked.
Herr Vogler hesitated and stooped lower to gaze directly at her. “Yes. There was no gun found at the body. But we know the dead man shot. He has residue on his right hand and there are spent nine millimeter casings near him. So, either the other shooter took the man’s gun after he shot him, or he threw the gun into the river.”
None of this helped Toni, except the revelation that the second man had probably not been shot, since there was no blood. But this German Polizei man seemed to know more than he was willing to tell them. It was his expression of superiority that bothered Toni. Where would they go from here? Jake must have kept the Russian alive long enough to get some information.
“What are you thinking, Frau Contardo?” Vogler asked in perfect English. “Let me guess. You know who did this. It’s the same man from Baden-Baden and Alexanderplatz. A man you know all too well.”
“That man wouldn’t have missed so poorly,” she said.
Franz nodded agreement. “She’s right.”
Herr Vogler considered that for a moment. He took the time to add another piece of gum to his mouth. “Perhaps. But maybe this man wanted to know a little more from the dead man. The man was down and bleeding and the shooter could have simply popped a round into the man’s head and finished him off. But he didn’t. No. We have a couple foot prints near the body. The shooter wanted information.”
Crap. This guy was good, Toni thought. She’d considered that precise scenario. It’s something Jake would do.
Vogler continued, “I would guess your friend got what he came for.”
“A name,” Franz said. “This dead man’s boss.”
“Exactly.”
Toni started the car and said, “It looks like your case is nearly solved.”
The Polizei man said, “You think so?”
“Yes. When your
men find the gun in the river, I’m sure ballistics will match at least one of the killings over the past couple months.”
“Maybe,” Vogler said. “But then we still need to wrap up motive and consider if the killer was hired. And if so, who hired him?”
She put the car in reverse and looked over her shoulder to pull back. “If I know our friend, you’ll have that by morning.”
The Polizei man kept his hands on the door, his eyes on Franz. “You take care, my friend.”
Franz pulled out a cigarette for his old friend, lit it, and tried to hand it to Vogler.
“Thanks. But I better stick with the gum.”
“That will just kill you a little slower,” Franz said.
“Not before the job.” Vogler pulled his hand away and tapped the roof.
Toni backed away, stopped, and did a U-Turn, heading back toward the center of Berlin. There had to be some way to find Jake. And it would come to her soon.
32
A chill came back to Jake as he’d waited for Alexandra to come around from the opposite side of the Spree River, where she’d watched Jake and the Russian shoot at each other. She’d pulled up just long enough for Jake to jump in before hurrying away from the meeting site.
From the riverfront, Alexandra drove around to the east, picking up one of the outer ring roads before asking Jake what had happened.
“About what you’d expect,” Jake said. “As I thought, there was never any money put up for a bounty. It was all a big ruse to kill off the old guard.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Your Stasi friend Bernard Hartmann isn’t too keen on the new SVR or their tactics.” Jake had an idea what motivated them, but would reserve judgment until he knew for sure.
“First of all, that Stasi bastard is not my friend. And second, he should talk. He killed his own people for minor indiscretions during the Cold War.”
Jake knew all of this. “I was kidding, Alexandra. The Stasi kept that Wall up at least a decade longer than they needed. Well, it was never needed.”
“I’m sorry. Stasi agents killed two of my cousins who tried to cross over to the west in the seventies.”
