Desert Fire

by David Hagberg

  Her director, Rolf Dürer, called her “the answer to every man’s dream.” The station manager, Kurt Bruckner, who was in love with her, called her his greatest asset. And the German National Television Board in Berlin persistently tried to lure her away from Bonn.

  “Nice job, Fräulein Waldmann,” a cameraman said, hanging up his headset.

  Joan flashed him a warm smile and got up from behind the desk. She felt very good about this story. A lot of heads would roll. Euro-television would certainly pick it up, and after tomorrow morning’s airing they would send a tape over to the American networks.

  She glanced up at the director’s booth as the studio intercom came on.

  “A smashing job as usual, darling,” Dürer said. “Before you go, Bruckner would like to see you in his office.”

  She frowned. It was nearly eleven. Unusual for Kurt to be here this late, especially on a weekend, unless he was after something. Namely her. He’d been trying to get her into bed for months now.

  Perhaps tonight would be the night to straighten him out. She walked down the corridor to her desk in the newsroom. She locked the script she had just read in her desk along with the files and notes on the Kraftwerk Union story, got her purse and coat and took the elevator up to the fourth floor.

  Bruckner’s office was through a set of glass doors at the end of a broad, carpeted corridor. Joan walked through the empty outer office, knocked once on the door and went in.

  The station manager was seated behind his desk. He was a tall, stolid man in his late forties, with gray hair. Seated across from him was a thin, stern-looking man wearing an unstylish wool suit. The television monitor was playing the tape she had just made.

  “There is no question among trade unionists that Germany can and should export its technology.” Her voice came from the monitor. Her onscreen image looked into the lens of the camera. “We must ask … what technology will we export? Who shall get it?”

  Bruckner flipped a remote control switch on his desk. The television monitor clicked off, and the office lights came up slowly.

  “Hell of a report, Joan,” he said, standing.

  The thin man rose. He was very tall. “Fräulein Waldmann,” he said. “Really, I have to concur with Kurt.”

  This man had “government” written all over him. But she returned his smile. “Thank you, Herr …”

  “I am Ludwig Whalpol.”

  “Major Whalpol wants to talk to us about the KwU story,” Bruckner said in a subdued tone.

  “Please, won’t you have a seat, Fräulein Waldmann?” Whalpol asked pleasantly.

  Joan looked sharply at him. “What’s going on here, Kurt? Is it what I think it is?”

  “Be reasonable, sweetheart. Just listen to the man. We may have jumped the gun here.”

  “No.” She remained standing. “My story will air in the morning. I told no lies, no inaccuracies. And, Scheiss, it’s a story that has to be told.”

  “I’m afraid not, Fräulein,” Whalpol said sadly, as if scolding a naughty child.

  “This is still a nation of laws!”

  “If need be I will have a Z notice brought over within the hour. I would much prefer we do this one on a friendly, volunteer basis.”

  “Verdammt! Is my story airing in the morning, Kurt?”

  “Just listen to the man, for Christ’s sake,” Bruckner said.

  “We are a nation of laws, Fräulein. But you can also understand that information vital to a nation’s safety and well-being must be kept confidential.”

  “Don’t give me that shit, Herr Major, whoever the hell you are. I’m not some little schoolgirl here. Legitimate defense secrets must be kept. But when a government begins to do something that endangers the lives of its citizens and perhaps world safety, something must be done to stop it.”

  “And how are we endangering world safety, in your opinion?”

  “By exporting nuclear technology which could be used for bombs.”

  Whalpol smiled. “KwU does not build atomic bombs, I assure you. Nor does it export the technology to do so.”

  “It sells nuclear reactors,” she said, infuriated at being patronized.

  “Just so.”

  “And it sells reprocessing technology. Weapons-grade plutonium from spent reactor fuel rods could be the end result. Anyone could make the bomb. Even someone like Saddam Hussein.”

  Whalpol turned to Bruckner. “Your Fräulein Waldmann is a strong-willed young woman.”

  “Will my story air in the morning, Kurt?”

  Bruckner lowered his eyes and shook his head.

  “Then I’ll take it to the American networks.”

  “You will be charged under the Secrets Act, with espionage,” Whalpol said softly.

  Joan stepped back. She couldn’t believe this was happening. “Then I quit as of now!”

  “There will be no job for you in Berlin, nor in Frankfurt,” Whalpol said.

  “My God … you’ve been spying on me!” She turned and barged out the door, emerging into the corridor just as her director was getting off the elevator.

  He stopped in his tracks, a bundle of files and papers in his arms. For just a moment, Joan refused to believe what they were. But she knew. They were her files and notes and the script for the KwU story. He’d taken them from her desk.

  “You too, Rolf?”

  Dürer shrugged. “Sorry, Liebchen. Orders. You know how it is.”

  28

  A UNE OF six Russian-built Tu-117a fighting vehicles topped a ridge in the desert 125 miles west of Baghdad, and on Saddam Hussein’s signal they stopped.

  It was the middle of the night, and they’d been traveling since before nightfall, straight across the desert, keeping well away from population centers. Hussein was paranoid, and the security measures designed to protect him were extraordinary. Whenever he left his command bunker in the capital city, he traveled in mufti and in secret.

  He got out of the third vehicle, five of his armed bodyguards surrounding him, and walked a few yards along the ridge, a smile creasing his jowly features.

  Below, nearly filling the valley, was a mammoth construction project. Even at this hour thousands of lights illuminated the spires and scaffolding and thousands of miles of pipes and gridwork. A continuous stream of trucks and earth-moving equipment went in and out. High-voltage transmission lines came across the desert from Baghdad in the east, from Turkey in the north, from Syria in the west and even from Saudi Arabia in the south.

  Peace was upon his nation. And this place would become the jewel of Iraq. “Flowers will grow where even the cactus failed to bloom,” he told his people on State Television.

  But coming here in secret, like a desert warrior in the night, even Hussein was awed. This time, he thought, they would not fail. The world would cower before the sacred rage of Islam.

  Minister of Defense General Ihsan Hajjaj came over from the lead vehicle, a cigarette cupped in his left hand. “It’s tremendous, Mr. President. But we must maintain secrecy for two more years. That is a very long time.”

  “Yes, it is,” Hussein said.

  “Please pardon me, Mr. President, but your presence here is very dangerous. Not only for you, but for the sake of secrecy.”

  “The United Nations inspectors have crawled over every centimeter of construction like the dung beetles they are. It is what it is. Insha’ Allah.”

  “Yes, Mr. President, but with you here they may take a new interest.”

  “What will they see, Ihsan? The largest desalinization plant ever constructed anywhere in the world. They will see water pumped from three thousand feet beneath the surface of the desert. And they will see thousands of German engineers and specialists. Five thousand miles of pipe. Fifty thousand miles of copper and aluminum wire. A million tons of concrete. Steel. Brick. Glass.”

  “Perhaps they will dig even deeper than that.”

  “What would they see?” Hussein asked. He felt powerful. He felt as if he’d never had so much stre
ngth as he did at this moment.

  To the northeast he could make out a broad flat spot on the valley floor. When this site had been selected for what was being designated as the All-Iraq Desert Agrarian Reform Project, the village of Qasr al Khubbaz had occupied the upper corner of the valley. Now the village was gone. Its 750 people were dead of a mysterious coliform bacteria in their water supply. The settlement had been bulldozed flat and the entire place paved with crushed stones.

  In 1982 Syria’s President, Hafiz al-Assad, had done a similar thing at his fourth-largest city, Hama. He killed twenty thousand of his people, flattened every building, and paved the entire area. He was President of his people. No one had forgotten it.

  Because the Hama project had been masterminded and arranged by Michael at Hussein’s bidding, Syria owed Iraq a very large favor. One that had been only partially repaid by Syria’s neutrality in the Gulf War. There would be other payments. Many others.

  “What would they see if they dug even deeper, Ihsan? What?”

  “What we are constructing in the salt caverns.”

  “Water pumps.” Hussein smiled, warmth spreading through his veins. There is no God but God. He felt as if he could fly up into the night sky, to the stars.

  “And other things,” Hajjaj replied nervously at the look on Hussein’s face.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. Can you explain this to me?”

  “The neutron-source reactor, Mr. President.”

  “Iraq has no nuclear program. We have forsaken all such projects. General Hajjaj, you were at my side when I made this announcement more than two years ago.”

  Some of Hussein’s other staff officers had gotten out of their vehicles, but kept their distance.

  “I understand what we have told the Israelis, and the Coalition.”

  “Am I a liar, Ihsan? Before Allah, is that what you think of your president?”

  General Hajjaj began to sweat. “I am simply concerned about security, Mr. President.”

  “But I lie. Therefore I am unfit to lead my people. I think it is safe to say that is your line of reasoning.”

  “Before Allah, no, my president …”

  Hussein pulled out his nine-millimeter SigSauer automatic and fired one shot point-blank into Hajjaj’s forehead.

  The general fell backward like a marble statue, dead before he hit the sand.

  “Colonel Zahedi!” Hussein shouted.

  His guards stood at a half-crouch, their weapons drawn.

  “Zahedi!”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Colonel Nayef Zahedi, chief of operations under General Hajjaj, answered from the back of the column.

  “I am promoting you to brigadier general, effective immediately. Will you serve as my Minister of Defense?”

  Hajjaj had been Hussein’s personal friend since the mid-seventies. But, like others in the past, he had misjudged Hussein. Zahedi was not going to make the same mistake. “Of course, my president,” he called out. “I will be honored to serve as your Minister of Defense!”

  They were all fools, Hussein thought. Zahedi, Hajjaj, Tariq Aziz. All of them fools, except for Michael, who was the only man in the entire world he could trust.

  29

  THE DRIVE TO her apartment in Bonn-Putzchen across the river seemed to take Joan Waldmann forever this night. It was very cold. No stars shone. It would probably snow again soon, though it really didn’t matter. The fight had gone out of her when she’d seen Dürer with her files.

  The story had been an uphill battle from the beginning. She wondered why she cared so much. When she was a child her father used to chide her: “You are too serious, Liebchen.” It was true. In Gymnasium she frightened boys off with her intensity. Now she felt more alone than ever.

  She parked her Volkswagen Jetta in the lot behind her high-rise building and took the elevator up to the tenth floor, where she let herself into her large, modern apartment.

  Closing and locking the door, she leaned back and shut her eyes. Ordinarily she did not mind living alone. Sooner or later the right man would come along, and she would have two babies. One boy, one girl. They would have a summer house in the mountains and take vacations in the winter to the coast of Spain, perhaps even to America. Just now, though, Joan wished for some companionship. Any companionship.

  She smiled wanly. If Kurt had stood up to Whalpol, she would have taken him home with her. To bed.

  After a while she undressed, ran a bath and poured a glass of white wine. The one thing that had bothered her in the KwU story was that she had not been able to find out whom the huge company was selling its technology to. She would find out the rest of the story, and then Major Whalpol and his cronies would sit up and take notice.

  The door buzzed as she walked nude into the bathroom. “Verdammt,” she swore, putting down her wine. She knew damned well who it was. She grabbed her robe from its hook on the bathroom door and pulled it on as she hurried to the door. The buzzer sounded again. “All right, Kurt,” she shouted. She’d give him a piece of her mind he’d never forget. She slipped the chain lock, unlatched the door and yanked it open.

  She got a glimpse of a tall, dark man in a heavy overcoat, his hat pulled low; then something hard slammed into her face, driving her backward into the apartment.

  Something horrible had happened to her right ankle; she could only stumble for balance.

  The man closed the door behind him, his hat falling off, and even in her daze Joan thought he looked familiar. She tried to open her mouth to cry out, but she was choking.

  Somehow she managed to throw up her left arm as the man struck again, but she could not defend herself. She knew she was going to die.

  The force of the second blow broke her shoulder, knocking her down, her head bouncing on the carpeted floor, black spots swimming in front of her eyes.

  She was helpless. It was happening so fast. He was so strong.

  The killer stood over her, an awful smile on his face.

  She could hardly move. Her legs seemed to be miles from her body, and she could hardly lift her arms. This could not be happening.

  The killer was on his knees beside her now, his eyes locked onto hers.

  “Why?” she wanted to cry, but she could only whimper.

  The killer pulled open her robe and looked at her breasts. He touched her nipples with a gloved hand.

  Joan tried to push herself away. The murderer punched her, first in the left breast, then in the right, pummeling her into excruciating pain.

  “Oh God,” she screamed in her brain.

  The killer pulled back, opened his coat, unzipped his trousers and roughly spread her legs. He entered her, thrusting brutally, as if more than anything else he wanted to hurt her.

  “Whore,” he growled in her ear.

  Almost immediately his body shuddered and he pulled away and scrambled to his feet. His penis glistened, already flaccid. The killer turned away to rearrange his clothing, then turned back, calmly smiling.

  Joan could do nothing now.

  The murderer’s lips were moving but no sounds came out. He backed away.

  Would he leave her? A tiny flicker of hope rose within her. But then the killer stepped close.

  “No,” Joan screamed silently.

  30

  THE KILLER LOOKED down at the woman’s body. She was like the other one, too easy. She had not fought back. She had not even cried for mercy.

  He raised his right foot, the heavy-soled shoe directly above her face, and stomped down with all his might, crushing her cheekbone, nose and forehead. He stomped again, blood splattering outward. The third time, Joan’s skull caved in with a sickening crunch.

  For a long time the killer looked down at the ruined remains of the woman, listening to the vagrant sounds of the building, the wind at the windows.

  He did not feel good, not how he’d thought he would feel, but a great clarity came to his mind and eyes.

  Everything was suddenly larger and more sharply define
d.

  He went into the bathroom and shut off the water running in the tub. With a large bath towel, he cleaned the blood from his shoe.

  At the front door he did not bother looking back as he quietly let himself out.

  Then the building and the night were quiet.

  II

  31

  THE APARTMENT WAS cold and quiet. The radio station had gone off the air sometime in the night as Roemer slept in his clothes on the couch. Only a soft hissing came from the speakers as he lay awake watching the first uncertain light of a Monday dawn graying his windows.

  He was a failure. He didn’t know what had gone wrong, or when, but he no longer had control over his life. A failed marriage, now a failed relationship with Gretchen (she had not returned from Berlin), a dying father, a stagnating murder investigation. And Leila Kahled, for whom his feelings were confused.

  For a moment at the hospital her eyes had become transparent to her soul. She was human, after all. She hurt, she was alone. They were kindred spirits in some eerie way.

  Roemer’s head was splitting. He lit a cigarette, the smoke burning his throat. It had been a nightmare moving his father from the hospital back to the Interlaken house. He’d driven through the night, fearful of being followed, but even more fearful that his father would die in the car.

  Max Rilke, his father’s sergeant, himself in his early seventies, had readied the master bedroom, and with his wife’s help they had managed to give the old man at least a modicum of comfort. A discreet private nurse would be hired, and a dialysis machine would be secretly purchased.

  “They will find out about this place sooner or later,” Roemer told them.

  “He should never have been moved to the hospital,” the tough old sergeant said. “But the bastards will never get him. Not alive.”

  Roemer had driven up to Munich that morning. He was in need of company, any company, but his ex-wife, Kata, had not been at home. He had considered going up to Berlin to confront Gretchen and her new lover. In the end he drove back to Bonn, where he lay on the couch listening to music and getting stinking drunk.