Desert Fire

by David Hagberg

  17

  ROEMER PARKED HIS car in its usual spot in the alley behind his building on the Oberkassel, then walked around front and let himself into the first-floor vestibule. His building was in a row of similar, modern steel-and-glass buildings.

  He would have much preferred a small house, or even a unit in one of the older, more traditional buildings downtown, but just now in Bonn, foreigners found the older sections of the city most charming. The price of anything decent, as a result, had been driven through the ceiling, even with the revalued mark.

  Gretchen Krause, with whom he had been living for two years, preferred the new and modern in any event. And Roemer had learned not to argue with her.

  He took the elevator to the eighth floor and let himself in. His apartment was bright and airy, with a balcony and several large windows overlooking the river and the city. A patchwork carpet covered most of the living room floor. In front of the stereo lay a couple of cushions, and on the wall hung several paintings by American artists. Gretchen had picked them out. Just now anything American was perfect with her. She complained that he was too German.

  He tossed his coat on the couch just as Gretchen, in a bathrobe, a towel around her hair, appeared in the bedroom doorway. She was tall and blond and pretty, with broad hips, a narrow waist and large breasts.

  “Walther …” She noticed the sling on his arm. “Oh, Christ, you’re hurt.” She started uncertainly toward him, then stopped.

  “I screwed up my shoulder a bit, that’s all.”

  “Where? What happened?”

  Roemer knew she wanted to mother him; it was her natural instinct. And yet she was mad that he had stayed out all night, and that he had been hurt in the line of duty.

  “What are you doing home?” he asked.

  “I called in sick. I was worried about you. You’ll get killed one of these days, and then what am I supposed to do?”

  Roemer could smell the coffee in the kitchen. “There was a murder last night. A young woman. It wasn’t very pretty.”

  “We have to talk, Walther. We can’t go on like this. Something is going to have to change.”

  This had been coming for months. But just now Roemer didn’t think he could handle it. “I’m tired and sore, Gretchen. Let me get some rest, and we’ll talk about it tonight. We’ll go out to dinner.”

  “Now.”

  Roemer went into the kitchen, where he poured a cup of coffee.

  Gretchen was right behind him. “Whenever it’s time to talk, you ignore me. I won’t be put off this time.”

  His back to her, Roemer hunched over the counter, the cup cradled in his hands, steam rising into his face.

  They’d met in Munich. She worked for the American Provost Marshal on the army base. A young GI had killed a German B-girl and the Joint Forces Agreement required German Federal Police involvement. The first time he talked to her he was struck with her sincerity.

  “Why can’t it wait until I have rested?”

  “Because something will come up. It always does. You’ll be called out on some emergency and I won’t see you for another day or two or three.”

  “Then we’ll talk, but I’m going to soak in a hot tub.”

  “I’ll run it for you.” She went into the bathroom.

  Roemer poured his coffee into the sink, then opened a bottle of beer and took it into the bedroom, where he peeled off his clothes. There was some blood on his bandage; a large bruise had formed above his elbow, and his shoulder throbbed now that the painkillers had begun to wear off. He took a deep drink of the beer. For a moment he thought he would be sick, but the feeling passed, and he went into the bathroom.

  Gretchen was sitting on the closed toilet seat, a thick bath towel on her lap. The water was running in the tub. Her eyes were wide with concern. “My God, you really are hurt. What happened?”

  He thought about Pavli, the look on his face when he turned the gun to his own head.

  “I was shot.” He eased himself into the tub. The water was wonderfully hot. Maybe it was time for them to have it out.

  He lay back, closed his eyes and held the cool bottle against his forehead. “It was a younger man. He didn’t really want to shoot me. Afterwards he shot himself. Blew his own head apart.”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Gretchen said softly.

  Roemer opened his eyes. “You wanted to talk. I’m a cop. Isn’t that what you wanted to talk about?”

  “You could have been promoted long ago. You could be a chief district investigator. You have the background, the education, the experience.”

  “I’d be stuck behind a desk.”

  “Yes! Is that so terrible?”

  “For me it would be.”

  “I won’t put up with this, Walther. I simply will not stand for it.”

  “Your choice,” Roemer said gently. He closed his eyes again. He had spent ten days in Munich that time. They went out together every night and in the end, when he finally did return home, he gave himself two weeks before he telephoned her to come to him. She had dropped everything and come running.

  She got up and shut off the water and stood over him. His head was going around and around with the vision of Sarah Razmarah’s ruined body.

  “You’ve changed,” she said.

  “We all change.” The footprints in the blood bothered him, but he didn’t know why.

  Gretchen left the bathroom. He heard her in the bedroom. It sounded as if she had pulled down the suitcases.

  “There’s a government affairs conference in Berlin over the weekend,” she called to him. “Kai Bauer asked if I’d like to come along.”

  Bauer was her boss. He worked for the parliament, translating news summaries. He was a priggish little man who had left his wife several months ago. His job was quite safe and involved a lot of travel to the States. He had a wonderful apartment across the river and a chalet outside Garmisch-Partenkirchen, south of Munich. He’d be a perfect catch for her. The thought didn’t sit well.

  He opened his eyes. Gretchen had come back to the doorway. She had taken off her robe, and she stood there nude. Her nipples were erect as they always were when she was excited or angry. She was a beautiful woman.

  “He thinks I should move out on you,” she said.

  Roemer didn’t know what to say. But he felt bad.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

  Her nostrils flared. “You’re impossible,” she cried. “Fucking impossible.”

  She went back into the bedroom and Roemer listened to her packing while the warmth of the water soaked into his bones.

  18

  AN HOUR LATER, when Roemer roused himself enough to get out of the tub, Gretchen was gone. He dried off and crawled into bed. He slept fitfully for a few hours, the pain in his arm and shoulder half waking him with a jolt whenever he moved. He dreamed of how it used to be with Gretchen, and of Sarah Razmarah’s body. Major Whalpol’s visage kept floating in and out nightmarishly. And just at the edge of his awareness he thought there was something else he should know. A face, perhaps. A figure, dark and threatening.

  The telephone woke him a few minutes after four and he painfully rolled over and reached to answer it. The caller was Leila Kahled, and the cobwebs instantly cleared from Roemer’s head.

  “Your office said you’d probably be at home,” she said.

  Roemer thought of his jacket still lying over the back of the couch. She’d be wanting Pavli’s diary. “Has everything been cleared up between your people and Lieutenant Manning?”

  “Yes. We’ve agreed to an autopsy; then Pavli’s body will be flown back to Baghdad in the morning.”

  “I’m genuinely sorry for the young man. He must have been very troubled.”

  “How is your arm?”

  “Painful.”

  “Listen, Investigator, I think it was a very brave thing you did, trying to save his life at the risk of your own.”

  “You should te
ll that to Gretchen.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You didn’t call to ask after my health, Fräulein Kahled.”

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Talk,” Roemer said.

  “I meant in person.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “You have a murder on your hands, and I have a suicide on mine. The two are certainly connected.”

  “We can meet at my office first thing in the morning. Say eight?”

  “No,” Leila said. “I think we should talk now.”

  Roemer stood up and took the phone over to the window. He looked down at the street. There were a few cars parked along the curb, but he recognized all of them. “Do you know where I live?”

  “I could be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “All right, I’ll see you then.”

  Roemer went into the bathroom and shaved, then dressed in slacks and a sweater. From his desk he took out a large brown envelope, which he addressed to himself at his office. He took Pavli’s diary from his jacket pocket and thumbed through it.

  Pavli’s handwriting was small and precise. Each entry was dated, but most of the writing was in Arabic. Sarah’s name, however, was in Latin script and appeared throughout most of the last third of the book, beginning in late October.

  Roemer studied the entries. It was clear that as early as the twenty-eighth of October Pavli had been thinking about Sarah. That was probably when they’d met. And if all had gone according to Whalpol’s scheme, it had probably been love at first sight.

  He checked his watch, then sealed the diary in the envelope. Before he returned it to the Iraqis he would need a translation. There was no telling if the woman would bring help when she came, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Leila Kahled was the Mukhabarat chief here in Germany. The Iraqi Secret Service had a very tough reputation. He wouldn’t put it past her or her people to barge in and snatch the diary. He stuck a couple of stamps on the envelope and deposited it downstairs in the mail slot.

  Back in his apartment, Roemer telephoned his office and spoke with Rudi Gehrman, operations chief for the district.

  Unlike the Bonn Kriminalpolizei, the federal criminal office was more a clearinghouse than a nuts-and-bolts investigative agency. The BKA depended on reports from other police forces, much like Interpol. Individual federal investigators, such as Roemer, were called in only for cases that crossed county lines or involved national issues. Gehrman was the coordinating genius behind all those efforts.

  “Someone from the KP called this afternoon and raised hell about you, Walther,” Gehrman said. “Came out of the blue.”

  “Manning?”

  “Right. Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on? The first I hear of this is you getting shot up. Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live. What’d Manning have to say?”

  “He wants us to handle this case—officially. I naturally told him I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”

  “It’s a long story, Rudi. You can call Schaller on it. This is his baby.”

  “He was here. And by the way, the colonel wants to see you in the morning. And you had another call, from a woman. Iraqi Federal Police. She’s involved at the embassy.”

  “I talked to her.”

  Gehrman was a short, thin man who wore steel-rimmed glasses. He was married and had six children who adored him. No other operations man in Germany could compare with him. But he got miffed when he was left in the dark.

  “Give me a clue, will you? I don’t know how to log this. Do we start a file? A case number? What about your time?”

  “I’ve been detached. You’ll get something on it.”

  “Detached,” Gehrman said. “It has a wonderful ring. Will you be gracing us with your presence soon?”

  “First thing in the morning. But listen, I want you to do something for me. But quietly.”

  “This doesn’t sound good.”

  “I want you to pull the national security file on Ludwig Whalpol. He’s a major in the BND.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I want to know who he works for, and I want his background. Whatever you can dig up.”

  “You’re playing with fire here, Walther. They don’t take kindly to those kinds of inquiries down in Pullach. They’ll want to know why.”

  “I don’t want them to find out.”

  Gehrman hesitated. “What have you gotten yourself involved with? I’ll have to clear this with Legler.”

  “No,” Roemer said sharply. Colonel Hans Legler was the Chief District Investigator. Roemer’s boss. “I don’t want a fuss, Rudi. But if you can’t do it …”

  “You’ll owe me a very large explanation.”

  “You’ll get it.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. But you’d better start thinking about how you’re going to cover your ass if the right people start asking the wrong questions.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning, maybe sooner.” Looking out the window, Roemer saw Leila Kahled getting out of her Mercedes in front. “Oh, one other thing. There may be a large, brown envelope coming for me tomorrow. If you haven’t heard from me by then, open it. It’s a diary. In Arabic. Have it translated.”

  “And don’t tell anyone about it,” Gehrman said.

  Roemer smiled. “You’re catching on. You just might make a good cop yet.”

  “An unemployed cop.”

  Roemer hung up, and only then did he remember the files on Sarah Razmarah and the Iraqi team that Whalpol had given him. He had stuffed them under the front seat of his car and had forgotten to bring them upstairs this morning. They were still there.

  19

  ROEMER OPENED THE door for Leila Kahled, and it struck him in that instant how like a pocket Tintoretto she looked. Her dark hair was up, her eyes were wide and her lips were moist. She was a painting. But clearly she was upset.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Investigator,” she said in perfect German. She looked beyond him into the apartment. “May I come in? Or perhaps you have company?”

  “No, please come in.” Roemer stepped aside.

  She brushed past him into the apartment, a faint odor of perfume wafting after her.

  Roemer closed the door. “Would you care for coffee, perhaps a glass of wine, Fräulein Kahled?”

  “This is not a social visit. I want what you took from Ahmed Pavli’s apartment.”

  “I don’t have it.” Roemer turned and went into the kitchen, leaving her standing there.

  “Then you admit you took something from the apartment,” Leila said, coming to the doorway.

  Roemer poured himself a small cognac. “Sure you wouldn’t like a drink, or do you adhere to your religion?”

  “I asked you a question, Investigator.”

  He took his time answering. He sipped the brandy. “Ahmed Pavli was a suspect in a murder investigation.”

  “Don’t be a fool, he didn’t kill that girl.”

  “They were lovers, weren’t they? They worked together.”

  Leila’s eyes narrowed. “What gave you that idea, Investigator?”

  Roemer smiled. “I’m curious about one thing here. Just what is an Iraqi national doing at KwU? Building nuclear reactors, perhaps? You were aware that Sarah Razmarah had been brought here from the United States to work at KwU.”

  “I wonder if you understand the significance of what you are saying,” Leila said evenly.

  She was beautiful. She didn’t look like a cop or a spy. In fact, she could pass for a mannequin. French. Very chic.

  “I understand the significance of murder,” he said. “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  Leila sucked in her breath.

  “No, I did not know it. Was it Ahmed Pavli’s child?”

  “We’ll know after the autopsy.”

  She took a deep breath and sighed. “I think I’ll have that cognac now.”

  Roemer poured the German brandy, and the
y went back into the living room, where he took her coat and hung it in the vestibule. She glanced over the record albums by the stereo, his collection of classical music mixed with Gretchen’s American and British rock.

  “An odd combination,” Leila said.

  “For an investigator or a German?”

  She turned to him. “Let’s not be at odds here. Please. This is simply too important.”

  “Then we need some honesty between us,” Roemer replied.

  They sat down, Leila on the couch, her long, lovely legs crossed demurely, and Roemer perched on the arm of a heavy easy chair.

  “Evidently you have been briefed by someone in your government,” Leila said.

  “I understand essentially what is going on at KwU,” Roemer said dryly.

  “You were told about me?”

  “Ostensibly you are an Iraqi Federal Police officer, here with your father. In actuality, I was told, you are chief of security on the Iraqi team.”

  Something flashed in Leila’s eyes. Disbelief? She knew he had been briefed, but he had not mentioned the Mukhabarat, and she might not suspect that the BND had talked to him.

  “What of Lieutenant Manning’s investigation?” she asked.

  “He understands that Ahmed Pavli and Sarah Razmarah worked at KwU, but he is not aware of the extent of your project.”

  “Which, as far as your murder investigation is concerned, is superfluous.”

  Roemer thought about the impression in Sarah Razmarah’s palm. Had it been too obvious?

  Leila sat forward, an earnest expression in her eyes. “Ahmed told me he was in love with her. I tried to discourage it, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s not what you think, Investigator,” she said sharply. “I knew that man. He came from a very good family. He was honest, sincere, bright.”

  “And troubled.”

  She nodded. “He had a conscience.”

  Roemer suspected that Leila, like Major Whalpol, was an expedient person. It was part of the business. “Was Sarah sleeping with anyone else on your team?”

  “Not that I was aware of,” Leila said carefully. “Do you believe someone from our team killed her?”