Nemesis: Innocence Sold

by Ross, Stefanie

  She turned to him. “Marianna Fabrizius. I am a good friend of Walter Röhrich. What’s happened to him?”

  “Please let Ms. Fabrizius through,” Stephan said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man pushing through the crowd to get closer to her. He appeared to be in his early or midthirties. With his suntanned face, casual but expensive brand-name jeans, and leather biker jacket, he stuck out, too. Despite the overcast sky, he wore aviators that mostly concealed his face.

  “Please don’t let that man out of your sight,” Stephan told the policeman.

  “The one with the sunglasses? Should I get his details?”

  The thought was seductive, but it might not get them anywhere. Stephan shook his head and was glad to have encountered a colleague who thought for himself. “No, it’s better to keep your distance. I’ll be satisfied with a license plate number. And be careful—if my suspicion’s correct, the guy’s dangerous.”

  “Understood. I’ll take care of it. I believe your new girlfriend’s getting impatient.”

  Stephan led Marianna Fabrizius to a quiet corner of Röhrich’s garden. “Your friend’s condition is as might be expected under the circumstances. He’ll need to spend some days in the hospital, and we’ll see to it that he gets protection. He told us you have an envelope for us.”

  Relief was overlaid by suspicion. “Who are you? And who did this?”

  “We guess it was one of his superiors. That would go along with what he told us.”

  “And his life’s really not in danger?”

  Instead of getting involved in a medical discussion, Stephan pointed to the sky. “Do you see a rescue helicopter anywhere? And the paramedics would be more agitated if his life were endangered. However, they did throw us out so they could work without being disturbed. So please have some patience. I don’t wish to be impolite, but the envelope?”

  A cautious smile appeared on her face, releasing the tension, and the woman looked ten years younger. “Come with me.”

  On the way to her allotment, Ms. Fabrizius gave him a detailed account of her reservations and noted that she had always warned her boyfriend that things would go wrong. “If only he wouldn’t take every instruction so literally. That’s a really bad trait of his,” she said and indicated the hedge surrounding her allotment. “What’s so bad about letting nature run its course? But no, he’s constantly going on about how I should’ve trimmed my hedge long ago in order to be in compliance with the rules of the allotment club. I only follow rules when they make sense. Basta!”

  Suppressing a grin, Stephan nodded and wondered how two so dissimilar people could have ended up together. Over the door, a Spanish saying welcomed visitors. Without thinking, Stephan quoted it and added the appropriate thanks. Ms. Fabrizius whirled around to face him. “That was perfect Spanish.”

  “I grew up there,” Stephan said, looking around the interior. Everything was excessively and very colorfully decorated, also orderly. A flower arrangement in a vase reminded him of the way his mother had decorated her dining table. He blinked to banish the memories, but everything in the garden house reminded him of his years in Spain.

  “I came back three years ago. But I miss it,” said Ms. Fabrizius. “The weather, the people, the colors, the sea. Everything. The sun shines brighter there. But what can I do? My daughter and granddaughter need me, and then there’s Walter, too. Sometime we’ll go back together.” She opened the drawer of a delicate escritoire. “I went and found the envelope when I heard the sirens. Somehow I knew. Since his colleague’s car blew up, Walter has counted on it almost daily.”

  Stephan wasn’t entirely convinced of Röhrich’s innocence. “Why didn’t he get any help?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “From who? It wasn’t that simple. He had no proof, just a bad feeling. And then there was also the risk that he’d turn to the wrong person. But you’ll be able to read that for yourself.”

  “I suppose that means you’re familiar with the contents of the envelope.”

  “Of course,” Ms. Fabrizius said in a tone that made clear just how superfluous she found the question.

  “Then you should accompany your boyfriend to the hospital before you, too, have uninvited visitors,” he said.

  “I was going to do that anyway.”

  He smiled and stowed the envelope in his jacket. There was no reason to reveal to anyone why he had gone into the garden house with the woman. “Then come on. Let’s see how far the doctor has gotten—he can’t do more than shoo us out again.”

  “I like your attitude. I wish there was more of you in Walter, but I’ll get him there.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  Stephan waited until the door of the ambulance was closed and waved farewell to Ms. Fabrizius through the window.

  His smile disappeared as he looked around. The people from the forensic unit were in the process of taking apart Röhrich’s garden house, but he found no trace of the blond man or of the policeman he had asked to watch him.

  He wondered whether his colleague had taken too great a risk when the officer came toward him with a cell phone in his hand. “The man drove in the direction opposite of the ambulance. Do you have a cell phone with Bluetooth? If so I’ll send you photos of him and the vehicle. You can forget about the plate number; it’s stolen. It’s on record as belonging to a red Golf, but your guy was driving a black Mercedes all-terrain vehicle.”

  While the pictures were being transferred to his phone, Stephan took a business card from his pocket. “Thank you for your help. If you want to transfer to the LKA, call me.”

  After examining the card, the policeman shook his head. “Thank you for the offer, but I’ve just applied in Kiel. Better commute, and at some point I have to think of my family.”

  “In what area?”

  “Narcotics. But I haven’t heard anything yet.”

  “That’ll change. I know the leader there quite well,” Stephan said.

  The policeman looked at the business card. “Hang on. Reimers, Stephan Reimers. Head of the Hamburg drug department. That’s really something. What are you doing here?”

  “It would take too long to explain. Once again, thanks for your help, and I’ll mention something to Klaus Martens, but you’ll have to convince him on your own.”

  “I’ll do that. Thanks very much.”

  When Stephan had made a note of the policeman’s name, he said good-bye.

  Stephan looked at his watch and waved Sven over. “It’s time. Let’s get out of here; you can make calls from the car. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

  The colorless industrial area near the A20 wasn’t exactly a place Daniel would have chosen to watch the sun go down. Only the company appealed to him, and he gave Sandra a great deal of credit for refraining from making superfluous or irritating small talk despite the fact that she had been impatiently watching the grounds of the trucking company on the display of her laptop for over thirty minutes. Mark’s authority had been sufficient to get him satellite images of the area even in the absence of an official mission. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop thinking about his team leader’s concerned expression. The fact that neither Daniel’s nor Dirk’s authority had been sufficient to get them the expensive satellite time indicated that there was a serious crisis somewhere in Europe and that it was a matter of days—more likely hours—before they would have to deploy for an official mission. Daniel suppressed the thought of threatening events that he couldn’t change and went over his plan for the hundredth time. He hated the idea of having to leave the action to Tom, Mark, and Kat and be limited to observing. But he had had no other options. He had to choose someone whose face was unknown to Blumenthal and who didn’t have an American accent.

  Sandra cleared her throat. “I can understand why you’re nervous, but why don’t you cancel the mission and let us make do with the satellite pictures?”

  Nervous? Where the hell did she get that idea? “A team of specialists would be needed to watch one or even
two moving vehicles via a bird. We have no access to those resources, but if we plant a GPS transmitter on them, we’re back in the game. However, at any moment someone with higher priority could need the birds and the light could go out here. And I’m not nervous.”

  “You are. You hate having to watch. Is it always like that with you? After all, you’ve led missions like this quite a few times before. Somehow, I still don’t understand it; after all, Mark and Jake are there, too. Don’t you step on each other’s toes commanding?”

  He would ask later how Sandra knew that planning and leading such missions wasn’t new to him. “It just works. It’d never occur to me to question the captain’s authority, but if my opinion differs from his, he notices. And yes, I’ve led the team a number of times already, even though I sometimes would have preferred to refrain from doing so. Someone who frivolously sends his people into harm’s way doesn’t belong at the upper end of the chain of command. To me, it’s that simple. And it’s also not all that normal that my boss will soon turn a friend’s motorcycle into a pile of scrap metal.”

  “But it’s pretty harmless in comparison to what you do otherwise.”

  “I’m completely calm,” Daniel said and noticed that his voice sounded too sharp. Then he had to laugh at the absurd situation: a policewoman with limited practical experience was trying to calm a SEAL who had completed a number of combat missions.

  Again Sandra seemed to guess his thoughts. “Don’t get cross with me, Lieutenant. Sure, outwardly you seem calm, but inside you’re not.”

  Daniel nodded; he was thankful when the ideal distraction appeared on the laptop’s screen. “Finally. A patrol car’s approaching the property,” Daniel said. He refrained from making reference to the black all-terrain vehicle that obviously was taking the same course.

  Daniel’s well-concealed nervousness only made him even more attractive to Sandra. She had long since said farewell to the cliché of the cold and controlled elite soldier, but Daniel’s empathy with and concern for his comrades and the police officers involved greatly appealed to her. If she hadn’t gotten to know him so well in the last few days, the tiny indications would have escaped her. She concentrated on the trucking company grounds. The Americans’ technical resources were outstanding. She couldn’t recognize details, but the picture was good enough that she could identify vehicles.

  “Shit, too dark already. I’m switching to IR,” Daniel said and pressed a combination of keys.

  Sandra didn’t question Daniel and waited for the screen content to regenerate. She inhaled sharply when it was possible to discern figures, emphasized in white, alongside the vehicles.

  “You can see every movement. There, they’re talking to each other. That must be Blumenthal and Mr. X. And Tom’s coming into play from the rear. That’s incredible; it looks like a TV show. Too bad it’s so serious.”

  “That’s how I see it, too. I’d rather be watching a DVD with you right now,” he said before he gave his boss and Kat the signal to start. “Now action,” he said, turning to Sandra once again with a forced smile.

  “Don’t be afraid, Daniel. They know what they’re doing. Trust them.”

  “I do, of course, but—” Tom’s voice from the headset, which had lain on the dashboard until now, interrupted his statement.

  Listening with concentration, Sandra followed the fast exchange of words in English, which was full of abbreviations. Nevertheless, she appreciated Daniel’s considerateness: he held the headphones so she could listen, and she caught the gist. The attempt to eavesdrop on the men’s conversation with the aid of directional microphones had more or less failed. Something was interfering with the reception, and they would later try to filter something comprehensible out of the fragments.

  “Tom’s sure Blumenthal will lead us to the child.”

  “I thought he hadn’t understood anything.”

  “I’m going to trust his intuition. Sven, did you get that? We’re going to let the guy go.”

  Instead of Sven, Dirk confirmed the instruction, but immediately qualified it: “You mean, ‘Let the guy go for the time being.’ We’ll stay on him.”

  “Typical accountant—that’s what I meant. Do you need me to be even more precise?”

  “How about putting it in writing?”

  Daniel grinned. “Let me know if you need backup.”

  “We were planning on that.”

  All banter was forgotten when Tom, who had been hidden behind a truck, moved toward the police car. Even on the display, one could see how quickly and smoothly he moved and finally crouched down at the level of the patrol car’s trunk.

  “I thought he was going to wait for the diversion,” Sandra said, thinking aloud, and noticed how breathless her voice sounded.

  “Apparently not,” Daniel said. No trace of his earlier nervousness remained.

  At the left edge of the display, a motorcycle rider appeared and stopped at the edge of the road opposite the entrance to the trucking-company grounds. Mark acted as if he were making a phone call and paid no attention to the men, who for their part seemed to ignore him after having looked at him briefly.

  It wasn’t until an Opel station wagon came racing along the road at an excessive speed that the men again turned toward what was going on in front of the trucking company. Holding her breath, Sandra watched as the station wagon struck the motorcycle despite braking and executing an evasive maneuver. Mark must have pushed off perfectly, for he flew through the air in a high arc and landed on the sidewalk while the machine slid across the asphalt, giving off an impressive rain of sparks. The station wagon came to a stop crosswise on the road, and an agitated woman jumped out. Kat. The policewoman ran to Mark, who hadn’t moved up to this point, and knelt beside him. It was only after a delay that it occurred to Sandra that the stunt had only been intended as a diversion. When her gaze swept back to Blumenthal’s and Mr. X’s vehicles, she was shocked. Tom was already back between two trucks. “I thought . . . Isn’t he . . . ?”

  “All done,” Daniel said with a smile, not taking his eyes from the display. “Boss?” he said over the handset.

  “Not now. I believe Kat’s considering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

  Laughter emerged from the headset; nevertheless, Sandra found it a bit odd. The men’s humor was sometimes abnormal.

  “There, look. Blumenthal and the unknown man are saying good-bye.”

  “Logical. Things are getting too hot for them. They have to be afraid ambulances and patrol cars are going to show up any minute now.”

  With clenched teeth, Sandra refrained from commenting on the self-satisfied explanation. Now that his plan had been successful, he had regained his usual aplomb. Great. Then she couldn’t resist winding him up. “I think they just don’t want to get wet.”

  Fat raindrops fell on the windshield, first individually, then as a real downpour.

  Daniel ignored her. “Shit. Cougar?”

  “I see it. No idea what’s wrong there. The things work.”

  “Maybe a jammer. We’ll follow the Daimler. Sven? Is there any reason to stop him and arrest him?”

  “No, unfortunately.”

  It was only now that Sandra saw that only one blinking point was moving on the laptop’s monitor. “Oh, shit, is only one transmitter working?” she asked, immediately wishing she could take back the question.

  Daniel nodded and spoke into his headset one last time while blinking and turning onto the road behind the all-terrain vehicle. “We’ll stay in contact on the cell phones. Let’s see if that’s the guy from the allotments.”

  Tom said, “Stephan’s description fit. It wasn’t possible to get a photo.”

  “Then I guess you’ll have to try harder in the future,” Daniel said and threw the headset onto the dashboard.

  Shaking her head, Sandra tried not to lose sight of the all-terrain vehicle through the veil of rain and the wipers, which were working at their fastest setting. “I don’t understand you. You needle each othe
r, but you just accept the failure of the transmitter.”

  “We can’t change that. Flexibility and improvisation are part of our job, and as far as the tone’s concerned”—Daniel shrugged—“that’s just how it is. There’s no better way to get rid of stress or frustration.”

  “Then I’m going to need thick skin, because following that guy in this weather is practically impossible.”

  A smile flashed over Daniel’s face before he stepped on the brake, cursing. In front of them a traffic light had changed to yellow. Instead of accelerating, the car in front of them had braked hard. Despite his efforts, the Mercedes began to fishtail; Daniel swerved into the right lane to avoid rear-ending the car ahead of them. “What’s this about? There’s no way the bastard could have gotten suspicious.”

  At this hour the industrial area was as good as abandoned, but Sandra agreed. There were still a few vehicles on the road, after all. “Maybe he’s paranoid. That would fit with the possible jammer.”

  “Great. That’s all I need.” Daniel had no choice but to stop the Mercedes right next to the all-terrain vehicle. No driver would have confined himself to a friendly greeting after the wild maneuver. Daniel and Sandra both gave the driver of the jeep an angry look that was appropriate for the situation.

  This time it was Sandra who cursed. For some seconds, the driver appeared unable to avert his gaze from Daniel; then he raised two fingers to his forehead in a mocking greeting. He smoothly accelerated his heavy vehicle and shot across the intersection in heavy traffic despite the red light. Other drivers braked and skidded on the wet road, and Sandra gasped as a clump of vehicles blocked the intersection.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Daniel. For the first time, Sandra saw him dumbfounded.

  CHAPTER 29

  He slowly got his pulse under control. The braking maneuver had been a routine action. He had assumed the station wagon behind him would change lanes and cross the intersection while the light was yellow. The unexpected move had surprised him, but that was nothing compared to the feeling inside when he recognized the driver.