Nemesis: Innocence Sold

by Ross, Stefanie

“I didn’t want to spoil your fun,” Dirk said. “Where’d you get hit?”

  “I’m all right. It’s just . . . Help me up before Maria finds out. They had inside information. Knew everything about the building and about me and Maria. The guy even knew that the windows only had a single pane of glass in them here in the old part of the building. He would have gotten more than a bloody nose from those new double panes. They had no idea who I am but wanted to find that out. You have to get Berger out of here. It’s not safe.”

  “We’ll do all that, Pat. But don’t get up for the time being. Take it easy. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, and what’s wrong with your arm?”

  Despite the injuries and loud protests in a foreign language, Sven had secured both men’s hands and feet with plastic bonds. He walked over to Pat, holding a wet towel. “Press that against your neck. You’ve lost some blood, so don’t overdo it.”

  “Are you a doctor now? I’m all right.” Nevertheless, he accepted the towel. “That looks worse than it is; a laceration.” He moved his arm to test it. “Works. So just keep the quacks away from me.”

  From behind, Pat heard a voice he knew all too well. “I hope you don’t mean me by that, O’Reilly.” He moaned, but Daniel was already kneeling next to him with one hand in his medical equipment bag. “You’ll need stitches in your neck, and your arm’s going to be X-rayed. You’d be well advised not to mess with me. I almost went insane the last few miles. Despite our flashing lights, we got stuck at that damned roundabout. Finally, I went up onto the sidewalk and almost scared some grandma to death.”

  Whenever he needed to distract patients from a painful examination or treatment, Doc talked his head off or argued with them.

  Although Pat would never admit it, he was grateful for the distraction. The disinfectant burned like hell and even made him forget the pain in his arm. “I’m really sorry about that, but don’t complain to me,” Pat said through clenched teeth.

  “I’m not. Damned good work managing this.”

  False modesty had never been Pat’s style. “I’d say so, too. But Berger helped me. So be nice to him. Can I finally get some sleep?”

  “Sure. As soon as I’ve evaluated the X-ray and know whether we can forgo a splint, I’ll prescribe twenty-four hours of rest for you and Maria.”

  “Maria?” Pat’s head came up.

  Cursing, Doc interrupted. “Hold still, you idiot. Do you want me to decorate your neck with this? Do you really think she hasn’t known for a long time? We ran down the hall like lunatics, and our vehicles are blocking the entrance. Despite its size, this place is a rumor mill, and you know yourself that agitation is not good for her. So be good.”

  Daniel was right. Pat peered past their team and could already see two figures in white coats coming into the room. For a moment, Konstantin von Blücher’s otherwise elegant manner deserted him. He stopped in the middle of the room. “Oh, shit.” Without addressing anyone in particular, he added, “Sorry.”

  Daniel didn’t turn around. “Maria? Your pigheaded Irishman’s all right. A harmless laceration. I’d just like to take a closer look at his arm. Fingers and joints movable, probably just a bad bruise or crimped nerve.”

  “Damn it, don’t talk about me as if I weren’t here,” Pat said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Don’t you want to use your connections among the doctors? How would it be if you put in a good word for Berger with Henrik and let him die here?”

  With a broad grin, Daniel turned to face Maria. “His head’s working fine. Give him a kiss by way of thanks from me when he’s presentable again.” Daniel looked at the Irishman, considering. “Unless you want me to . . .”

  With his good arm, Pat swung at Daniel. “You wouldn’t survive that.”

  Daniel stood up and held out a hand to him. “Come on. We’ll find an X-ray machine and a water faucet you can hold your head under.”

  Pat let himself be helped up and immediately embraced Maria. “It really looks worse than it is. Please don’t worry.”

  “It’s too late for that. I thought . . .”

  When she pressed a hand to her stomach, a fear grew in Pat that overshadowed everything he had experienced in the last minutes. “Maria?”

  “Nothing. Your daughter just tested her close-combat skills, and they’re considerable, given who her father is.”

  “Nevertheless, you’re going to stay home for the next twenty-four hours,” Konstantin said, repeating Daniel’s instruction. “And it’d be best not to argue. There are three of us, Maria. What should I do with the two patients Pat’s given us?”

  “Prison hospital,” Sven said. “I’ll take care of it. Now get out of here so we can talk to Berger in peace. Should we wait for you, Doc?”

  “Start. It’s enough if Sandra’s here.”

  Pat ignored Daniel’s threatening look and stepped over to Berger’s bed. He praised the policeman. “Perfect timing.”

  “Could have been a movie. Thanks,” said Berger. “When this is all over, I’d like to express my thanks appropriately. Without making any further attempts to find out who you are. The result is enough for me.”

  “That sounds good. I’ll see you. Go ahead and get better first.”

  Dirk joined Daniel and Pat. “I caught Pat’s stroke of genius. You take care of his arm; I’ll call Henrik. He’s hardly going to refuse his accountant a small favor—then I’ll talk to Konstantin.”

  Once uniformed officers had taken away the white-haired man and—following first aid—the man with the thigh wound, peace returned to the hospital room. An unreal contrast to the hectic, organized action that had taken place just a few minutes earlier. Sandra had the feeling of being back in the Mercedes, driving to Lübeck. For a fraction of a second, she hadn’t recognized Daniel after Dirk’s call. Fear for Pat, which he had kept under iron control but which had nevertheless been noticeable, had dominated him, but he had nevertheless steered the car through the stop-and-go traffic with concentration and only reacted to the blood outside the door to the room with a sharp inhale. She was still struggling with the transformation from the casual, humorous partner at her side to the controlled Navy officer. It wasn’t until he had treated Pat’s injuries that she recognized the man she still wanted to spend many more nights and days with.

  She jerked when Sven nudged her. “You look miles away. Everything all right?”

  She recognized the honest interest, and despite his own injuries Berger, too, looked at her with a mixture of understanding and concern. It would be stupid not to accept the implied offer of help, so she decided to answer honestly. “In the last years, I’ve drawn my weapon perhaps twice but never even fired it, and now this. This is insanity. Also, I’m losing any overview of how all this could fit together, and . . .” She barely managed to suppress a comment about Daniel.

  Sven pushed a second chair over to Berger’s bed and grimaced when he discovered Pat’s blood on the floor. “You’ve chosen yourself a damned difficult and demanding job and are starting out with a case that’s taking all of us to our limits. After this, there will also be calmer times. That you have simultaneously chosen a partner with a somewhat unusual job makes it even more complicated, of course. But with that you have someone at your side who understands you and your job. However, that needs to be the case the other way around as well.”

  Sandra thought about how naturally Daniel had touched her arm before he had towed Pat in the direction of the radiology department with a firm grip, intended to support him inconspicuously, and was already ashamed of her earlier thoughts.

  With determination, she pulled herself together and managed a smile. “Well, I wasn’t really planning to discuss my relationship with Daniel here.”

  Sven put a hand through his hair, once again destroying any vestige of a proper hairstyle, and now mussed blond strands were sticking out. He grinned at her. “Sure. But I thought it would be good for you to clear your head before our discussion here. I hate to admit it, but I could use your help; you’r
e more familiar with this environment. But this is really the wrong time for me to share my overly rich experience with this particular type of human being with you.”

  First the reluctant admission that he could use her help, then the pathos on top of it. Sandra laughed. The sample of Sven’s much-praised empathy in combination with his dry sense of humor had helped. She could no longer understand what it was that had bothered her about Daniel’s professional manner.

  Berger had laboriously raised the head of his bed and brought himself into a sitting position. Although his forehead was beaded with sweat from the effort, he managed a strained smile. “Please keep going. I find all this very interesting.”

  Berger looked at her, while Sven signaled to her to keep going. “It’s very simple. These guys are after me, too—and I don’t know why. However, a car bomb’s a different caliber. Why go to all the effort?”

  “I don’t know,” Berger said, but he avoided Sandra’s gaze.

  Irritated, Sven put a hand through his hair once again. “That’s too bad. I thought we had gotten a step closer. Do I have to remind you that it’s only thanks to our help that you’re still alive? Pat risked his life for you. Don’t you think you owe us a bit more than evasion? What are you waiting for? To get better and continue poking around in the fog without success as you’ve done up to now? Or do you seriously think your partner’s going to solve the case? He’s got no chance by himself.”

  “My partner?” Alarmed, Berger sat up straighter, but sank back down with a groan.

  Sven wanted to challenge him. “Hannes Wartberg.”

  That had an effect. “You’re more well informed than I thought,” Berger said. “Damn it, you’re also holding some things back. How do you know about Hannes?”

  “From your boss. The one in Kiel, I mean, Dr. Eisenberg. He trusted us enough to provide us with information regarding your assignment. That doesn’t help us, however; we need your cooperation and your results.”

  “Can I make a quick call?”

  Sven handed him his cell phone. Considering, Berger looked at the phone. “If I call Günther now, it will take forever before we can continue. He has many good sides but simply cannot be brief. I believe you. Nevertheless, I cannot imagine that he put Hannes’s name in play.”

  “That’s true. It wasn’t until Tannhäuser had asked about him specifically. We knew Wartberg had turned to the LKA in Kiel with an indeterminate suspicion. The rest was simple.”

  Berger sketched his assignment and thereby confirmed the results of their own investigations. “No matter what I tried, I found no concrete evidence. I got an increasingly bad feeling. Hannes and I poked around in countless files and looked for peculiarities or commonalities. This didn’t really get us any further. It wasn’t until the son of Mr. Richter was supposed to be kidnapped and our two colleagues reacted extremely strangely that we had the feeling we were about to make a breakthrough. Röhrich had already made a negative impression on us earlier. We examined his personnel file and those of Blumenthal and Lüttgens. Without concrete proof, Röhrich was my first real suspect. I was certain he was involved. In order to lure him out of the bush, I revealed that I was after Blumenthal and Lüttgens, and he even seemed to want to help me. My conviction began to wobble, and now he seems to be off the hook. Would you tell me what the story with Blumenthal and Lüttgens is?”

  Since Sven seemed lost in his own thoughts, Sandra took it upon herself to summarize the events of the previous evening.

  Following her explanation there was silence. Cold air came into the room through the broken window. “Are you cold?” Sandra asked with concern when Berger shivered a little.

  “No, I’m all right. I probably won’t be in this room much longer anyway.”

  Sven emerged from his thoughts. “That’s true. As we speak, my partner’s arranging your death.” His wink made it clear that this was a joke. “If I know him, he’s already in contact with Kiel, and you’ll be received by your family there.” Sven pushed aside his chair, which scraped across the floor. “I hate hospitals,” he said. He indicated a spiderweb moving back and forth in the wind in front of the undamaged window. “We’re dealing with someone who’s sitting in the middle of a web like a spider and who has held all the threads in his hand and controlled everything up to now. At least this is what he believes. It’s about time we penetrated the center and destroyed the spider. We must take a look at the documents you and Wartberg collected. This is where we’ll find the reason why you were supposed to be disassembled into your component parts.”

  Sandra didn’t let the spiderweb out of her sight. How did that fit with her Internet research? With the children who had disappeared? One man who was controlling events. Why? For profit? Prestige? What about the guys who had been planning to take out the private detective? She had a thought. She opened her mouth but closed it again.

  “What were you going to say, Sandra?” Sven asked.

  “The spider. It protects its web. By any means necessary. Why? We agreed that it cannot be primarily about money. Fifty thousand for a child—that’s not going to make you rich by their standards. But what if it’s about the clients? Think about what I said to you about the motives. Bored guys with seemingly no boundaries. Looking for the ultimate kick. He’s sitting in the middle, supplying his friends and acquaintances with children, and then—” She broke off and considered whether she was getting too far away from reality. “But is there really a demand so great it would be worthwhile? Or is it really a matter of abuse of power?”

  Sven nodded. “I’m guessing the first. He knows his clients, who probably come from the same circles as he does, and thus has the ideal means of blackmailing them. Now I also have a sense of how those sonny boys from last night fit into the picture.”

  Puzzled, Sandra tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I do see the picture you’re seeing, but where does it begin and end? Who could it be? And if we’re right, it would be a nightmare.”

  Sven considered Berger’s wrecked face. “It already is, Sandra. And it’s time we ended it.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Sandra’s conversation with Sven ended abruptly when Dirk and Daniel returned at almost the same time. While Daniel was interested in the readings displayed by two devices monitoring Berger’s vitals, Dirk informed the policeman of their plan, to which Berger agreed after having considered it briefly.

  Without waiting for a response to his knock, the doctor Sandra had seen with Pat earlier entered the room. He came directly over to her and bowed slightly. “Excuse my manners, but it was a bit hectic earlier. Konstantin von Blücher, but the first name’s of course fine for Daniel’s charming girlfriend.”

  Bewildered by the formal introduction, Sandra stuttered when she gave her name. “The first name’s sufficient, of course,” she said more calmly.

  Daniel seemed to have guessed her thoughts; he grinned at her before he turned to Konstantin and indicated a monitor displaying numerical values that were cryptic to Sandra. “I don’t want to interfere in your treatment, but the trip to the Baltic clinic seems like it might be too stressful in the wake of the excitement up to now.”

  Konstantin indicated a tray on the nightstand on which some ampoules and syringes lay. “I agree with you; our ambulances are not exactly known for their comfort. Mr. Berger’s not going to begrudge himself a break.” He smiled at the policeman. “When you wake, you’ll find yourself in surroundings comparable to those of a five-star hotel.” The doctor drew the liquid from an ampoule into a syringe.

  Berger raised a hand. “That’s not necessary.”

  Konstantin raised an eyebrow. “You mentioned having studied political science. I didn’t know you’d studied medicine as well. Since my valued colleague and I have come to the same conclusion independently of each other, the decision stands, my friend. Relax, and you won’t feel the little prick at all.”

  Berger looked around, seeking help, but found only shrugs and smiles. With resignation, he allowed Konstan
tin to give him the injection. Seconds later, his eyes were already closing. “Does he always express himself so sententiously?” he still managed, barely comprehensible.

  Daniel patted Berger’s shoulder. “Yes, he does, but you get used to it, and as a doctor he’s really damned good.”

  Irritated, Konstantin collected his utensils, threw the used syringe into a red container, and tossed his plastic gloves after it. “To what exactly was your question referring?” he asked with such puzzlement that Daniel laughed.

  “Nothing; just forget it. Your patient’s sleeping. What now?”

  “Well, now I trigger the alarm. However, only personnel I trust will respond. Two of them I’ve explicitly asked to keep an eye on who takes an interest in this tragic occurrence despite the fact that doing so is not among their primary responsibilities. I want to know who I can expect this subversive behavior from.”

  “What?” Sandra lacked the patience for politeness.

  “I expressed myself clearly,” said Konstantin, manifesting a complete lack of understanding, while he removed the sensors from Berger’s body and smiled with satisfaction when a shrill alarm went off.

  Although Sandra knew the policeman was only sleeping, she swallowed hard when his body was rolled out of the room under a sheet.

  “I hope they’ll at least use a normal ambulance and not a hearse to transfer him,” she murmured to herself.

  When Sven grinned at her comment, she’d have liked to kick him in the shin, but that would clearly have been childish; she confined herself to giving him an evil look. “I was talking to myself; you can stay out of it.”

  “Talking to yourself? At your age? Before that gets out of control, please make sure the medical center’s computer is providing the correct information about Berger. We’ll meet in front of the entrance afterward.”

  At the medical center’s information counter, there was a long line of people waiting. Many of them were nervous and already impatient, but the lady at the computer didn’t let this ruffle her. With a combination of gestures and the repetition of key words, she described the way to the patient being sought by a woman wearing a head scarf and a long robe.