by Peter Riva
“Look, if I don’t have it, and you don’t have it, is there anyone else who could have taken it?” Pero saw it, he saw it in Tische’s eyes. There was a third side to this battle, a second opponent Tische was waging war against, it was the doubt Pero needed him to think about. But Tische was smarter than that.
“Then we do not need you. Good-bye Mr. Baltaz …” he backed Pero up against the wall, the cattle timbers pressing his back as Tische slowly pressed the blade into Pero. Even with Pero’s two hands also gripping the man’s hand holding the knife handle, Pero couldn’t stop him. Tische was too fanatical, his bulk and the strength of his pure hatred and pleasure combined were overwhelming. He was drooling, For God’s sake! He wants to kill me, he is enjoying this! Pero thought. He felt the blade slowly inch through the coat and begin to slice into his skin.
“Halt! Lassen dieses mann, jetzt!” Stop, let go this man, now! It was Heep, to the rescue. With him was Susanna, clicking away on a digital camera, flash punctuating the darkness of the cattle car.
Tische pulled the blade back, out of Pero’s skin and jacket and it disappeared into the folds of the overcoat like it had never been. Pero guessed the camera wouldn’t have caught the sheen of the blade.
Tische put his face next to Pero’s, very sensual, very intimate, licked his lips and whispered “Gut, it is not over, but for now, gut genug” (good enough). “You will remember. I give you two days to comply or we will have them all killed. And all your little friends from Kenya—especially the one you call your friend …” Pero knew he meant Mbuno, “and his wife who is not quite dead, yet, and,” he paused, smiling, “Yes, and your parents for good measure, we can kill them all.” With that, he spun around and walked off.
Heep wanted to stop him, but Pero told him to let him go. As frightened as he was, he knew this enemy. Pero was in no doubt that his use of the word “we,” when he could have said, “I,” meant there were others. Pero needed to watch this man, his enemy’s main protagonist, or else a stranger could come out of nowhere, silently replace Tische, and kill them all, as promised.
Behind Heep and Susanna waited the police officer that Tische had arrived with. Turning, Tische instructed him, “Wir verlassen, Hans” (We’re leaving, Hans).
“Jawohl, mein chef” (Certainly, boss). And they strode away as if nothing had happened. They were untouchable, their whole manner said so. The other police guarding the film location saluted as they passed.
“Heep, Susanna, say nothing to anybody.”
Chapter 7
Moscow Express
The flash pictures showed nothing. They were back in the hotel, the day’s filming having finished on a high, everything “in the can” was perfect, and Danny looked really wonderful as the star he was. He retired for the night as Heep and Pero stayed up late, planning the next day’s filming scheduled for eight the next morning, minus Pero. He planned to catch the 1:30 a.m. train to Paris that night.
Heep wasn’t happy. “Pero, you need to have a doctor stitch that up.” They were finally alone in Pero’s room. Pero peeled off the gaffers’ tape he had used as an emergency Bandaid. The wound began to weep again. He covered the slit with a clean hotel facecloth to soak up the blood.
“If you’ll give me a hand, we can shut the cut here with superglue. I need to get a move on tonight.”
“Oh, okay,” Heep said reluctantly. They went into the bathroom. Pero lifted off the blood-soaked towel. He thought, the wound should be pretty much clean by now, blood is a good cleanser. He asked Heep to squirt superglue right along the slice. It burned like hell. It was about a half-inch deep, nothing vital was hit as they could see only surface flesh, no internal dark purple tissue. However, Pero had squirmed when Tische stuck him and that made the cut wider. While they worked, they reviewed. “Tische had never moved, steady as a rock, I must have sliced myself, he only meant to pierce me, not slice me.”
“Oh, good, that mitigates the bastard, does it?”
“No, but …”
“No ‘buts’ Pero, he meant to kill you right then and there. God, did you see his face? He was drooling!” Heep’s face expressed disgust.
“I know, his breath smelled of rotten teeth or meat, it reminded me of a brute animal, something wild we’ve filmed, a big cat maybe or a hyena.”
“You’re right Pero. Hyena, definitely, hyena. He had that killing lust they get when they know they can’t be stopped. Big jaws, powerful shoulders, hyenas are more dangerous than any lion.”
“Well, hyena or not, Tische is a serious threat to us all. Danny’s on his radar too after Tempelhof …” He glanced a warning at Heep.
“Yeah, and that means all of us, I get it.” The superglue started to set under the incandescent lights of the bathroom. It wasn’t pretty, but it was together, as good as a butterfly bandage. “That’ll do,” Heep said. “But you need to take some antibiotics, I’ll go get some.”
He was back in a half minute. Much to Pero’s surprise, Susanna was with him. Pero was busy trying to wipe down the sink in the bathroom where he had dripped on the floor. She pushed Pero out of the way and took over. She finished with the sink and sank to her knees, wiping the floor. She asked, “And vat do you want me to do with the recording?”
“Heep?”
“Look, Pero, I could listen, but I have no idea how to record with the damn thing.”
Pero asked Susanna “Did you listen?”
“Ja. Had to. As Heep said, you are an idiot. But brave. Why did you not call out for help?”
“I guessed Heep would be on the way.”
“Well, I would have been sooner Pero if I had known there was a blade involved, you never gave me a clue.” Pero had forgotten that sound doesn’t always conjure up images. “It was only when he said good-bye that way that we guessed what he was up to, not how. What a vicious bastard.” Heep handed Pero the prescription pill bottle, “Here, take two now and one every six hours. If the damn thing gets puffy, see a doctor fast. The blood supply there goes right to the heart, don’t mess around.”
Susanna got up off her knees. The place was pretty clean. “So, vat am I to be doing with the recording?”
“Oh, hell, Lewis is not going to like this.” Heep squinted his eyes and tilted his head questioningly. Pero nodded, “Yeah, him again.”
Pero pulled out a cell phone, walked to the window, and Susana peered over his shoulder at his hands as he activated the cell phone programming. Pero thought she was just nosey when it came to her technology field. He listened. It rang. When he heard static, he pressed 5-5-5. Lewis’s voice came in clear: “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been trying to reach you.” Damn, he forgot to set the ringer. Its fail-safe setting was to keep the ringer off while they were filming. Lewis had told Pero, but he had forgotten.
“Sorry, sorry. Look, there’s been action here, I need to report. Okay, if I put this on speaker?” And, not waiting for Lewis’ okay, he proceeded to do so.
“No, no it is …” Lewis paused, “Ah … It’s already on speaker isn’t it?”
“Yes. Heep’s here and we have a new member, Susanna Reidermaier daughter of Silke Reidermaier.” He saw Susanna flinch at her mother’s name. “I trust her with my life, she’s reliable.” He used the CIA term to reassure Lewis. It didn’t much. And Susanna looked at him with that quizzical look again.
“Damn Baltazar, what’s the point of having secrets if you are always going to involve anybody you are standing next to?”
“Heep here. Pero’s been stabbed, he’s bleed …”
Pero interrupted, “I am okay. Lewis, look, I didn’t ask for this. I specifically asked not to have this happen again. Two weeks, within minutes of me getting this job offer out of the blue …” He stopped. He had gotten this offer unexpectedly, he didn’t normally do film work and yet only his agent knew he was not working. “Wait Lewis, wait, this is crucial. Here, talk to Heep, he’ll fill you in and Susanna can play you a recording. Heep give me your room key.” He did and Pero ran out t
he door.
In Heep’s room, he called his agent in LA on the room phone. Dick’s phone rang twice, his assistant answered. Pero was told she would give him a message that he was otherwise engaged. “Then tell him this, unless he’s talking to me within five seconds, I am going to tell Danny Redmond and the studio that he tried to screw this deal and I’ll make sure Dick never works in LA again. Oh, and tell him his client—now the full producer of Danny’s new film—is on the line.”
He counted mentally. And a one and a two …
“Pero, how great of you to call. What’s this about producing? With Danny?” He said it as if he was on first name terms with Redmond. Dick was TV, second-tier reality TV, he would kiss the ground Redmond walked on to advance his career.
“Cut the crap Dick. Now get this, I am the producer, sole sharing with Redmond. Full studio and bank backing made the deal last night … no, don’t interrupt or you’re fired. I need a complete and honest answer from you, your job depends on it. Ready?”
Dick said, meekly, he was.
“Fine, where exactly did the second unit work offer come from? Exactly?”
“Well, as I told you, the studio called and asked who we had, and I thought of you …”
“Okay, you’re fired, you’re lying.”
“No, no please Pero, I’m sorry. You want the real truth?” Was there any other kind, slime ball? Pero thought. “We suggested Tommy Lewis, you know him, he’s good, he is … well, anyway I suggested him. They, the studio had to get approval. About an hour later they called back to say they had a pre-approved name, yours.”
“Dick, who was approving the name?”
“Why their new financial partner in Germany, of course, they need financing approval sometimes. I have the deal memo here someplace … yes, here it is a troove-er-ee-ins bank.” TruVereinsbank. It all fit.
“Dick, you’re not fired. But any deal Redmond puts before you, you agree to sight unseen, got that?” Pero wanted to make damn sure Dick did not change anything Danny wanted. “If I hear you changed one comma of any contract you’re no longer my agent, got that?” He could hear Dick mumbling. Time to drop the financial hammer to make sure Dick did as he was told, “Oh, and Dick, check my employment and financial rating with Citibank, you might be shocked. I could buy your agency for cash. Bye.” Pero knew if he asked the bankers, Director Lewis’ standing orders with Citibank would make Dick’s hair stand on end. Pero would appear golden, platinum, for once in his career, absolutely bankable. Might as well play the Hollywood power card, Pero thought.
He ran back to his room. They were just finishing playing the recording to the open phone on the desk. It made his flesh crawl. “You will remember. I give you two days to comply or we will have them all killed. And all your little friends from Kenya—especially the one you call your friend and his wife who is not quite dead, yet, and … Yes, and your parents for good measure, we can kill them all.” The recording playback stopped.
The phone speaker responded first, “We need that recording digitally transmitted, can do?”
“Pero here Lewis, yes,” he could see Susanna nodding “we’ll do that. First, you need to know that Tische’s company was the one who asked my agent for me by name two weeks ago. I thought his name came into it after I filed for Berlin permits. But my agent, Dick Tank, just confirmed my name was floated to him, not by him, and I was chosen before we filed those permits. So they knew I was on that plane, and get this, it’s important, they planned for me to be here, they set me up before I knew you would need me. So, why the hell did you choose me?”
“Oh, damn, it’s too obvious. Shit. Why? Because you reported that you were traveling, as all operatives must. We simply matched your itinerary with the need for a packet transmission.”
Pero told Suzanna and Heep that a packet is papers only.
Lewis continued, “Right, we here never planned a package delivery, that was Station’s doing, we think.”
Pero was beginning to connect the dots, “Yeah, but think about it. They knew your procedures. They got me to go on this shoot. I then inform you that I am going to Berlin. Presto, and then you have a sudden need for my services. Tag, I was it. And this means they know that I once—just once—was an operative. Look, that was only one time, ever. And we were all exposed, it was way too public.” Lewis and Heep knew Pero meant Kenya, Suzanna looked perplexed. “And Tische specifically named Heep and my friends in Kenya. It fits; he may be doing business with al-Qaeda.”
“Why?” Lewis asked.
“I don’t know yet, but the only other source would be you, Lewis. You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“No. I did not.” It was a flat no, backed up by the single person pronoun, emphasized singular.
“So, let’s look at something else. Somehow, they knew the CIA was moving something, right? So when did someone order Mil Intel to lift the sample?”
“Sixteen days ago. But it was fourteen days ago that Mil Intel called us in.” Lewis paused. “Oh, Christ. Once we knew we would regain possession of the package, we knew we needed to handle it. Congressional cutbacks, you see, so we need to use agents in place, no plane fares if we can help it. That meant Berlin Station, but Station has a German cop attached twenty-four seven. If we have a cheaper alternative, we have to use that, someone there already on their own buck … Oh God, sorry, Pero, Tische only knew our internal intel, our procedures, maybe a leak from Berlin Station. It’s not an al-Qaeda link. We set you up and didn’t know it.”
“No you didn’t Lewis, someone else there at CIA did, told Tische what the schedule was, no way he could have found out your decision to lift the sample without an inside informant. It was his mentioning my parents that just tipped me off really, it just took a while to sink in. No way has al-Qaeda known about my parents, they wouldn’t care. Only your files have my parent’s information. And I suspect that the inside informant is part of the same team that’s also in the field, looking for this stuff. Why they are looking, I don’t know. But if this leak was passing information to the likes of Tische, he would, could, have people in the field watching us all. Who are you reporting to?”
“Don’t go there, I cannot answer that question.”
“Well, if you cannot answer, you can at least think. Work it out. Someone in State or CIA Headquarters is passing information to Tische.” Pero paused. “What the hell’s in that bag of heavy water that’s so damned important?”
“You had better find out. It all hinges on that answer.”
“Okay, I was leaving tonight and, before you ask, I am not telling you. Sorry. Here’s what I need you to do, field agent instructions …” Heep shook his head and Susanna looked even more puzzled. Pero waved his hand at them to dismiss worries and to help his concentration.
“Welcome back,” Lewis said.
“Yeah, well I quit for good after this, quit the whole thing. Got that? First, I need you to find out who handled the gold shipment and where it is now. I suspect the Swiss will have refused it and it’ll be on its way home, or, wait, somewhere else, a new buyer … watch for a TruVereinsbank connection here, Lewis. It may be simple, but errors sometimes are. Okay, second, I need to make sure my parents, Mary Lever, the playwright Letterman in London, and the entire crew here, and especially don’t forget Susanna, and my friends in Kenya are protected. I can’t go and do this thing unless you take care of them.”
“Agreed. We have command and control synchronicity with the security forces in Germany. I am pulling the gloves off this one, budget be damned.”
“Don’t you like being used?”
There was a pause. “I see what you mean, don’t rub it in. We screwed this up. So I’ll cover your back.” There it was again, the singular, not plural, pronoun. “I will have the police replaced—especially as Heeper told me who Tische came to the Museum with—an ex-Stasi of the worst kind, we’ve got records on him. We’ll put a crack team in place. Same for Letterman in London. For Kenya, all we need to do is tip off the President. H
e has got national heroes there and there are some crack troops we’ve trained, anti-terrorist experts trained in Socorro, New Mexico. They’ll do. Your parents, they’re on US soil, and I’ll have to ask the FBI. It may take time. May I suggest a private team? You pay, we’ll refund?”
“Agreed. But you have to put them in place, here’s my dad’s private number.”
“We have it, in case something should happen to you, we keep those up to date. Now, Mary Lever … may I suggest that she goes to her uncle? That Nigerian muscleman friend of yours is still with him, he’ll protect her.” Heep nodded. Pero and Heep both trusted the ex-soldier, Kweno Usman, he had saved Mary once before. So, Pero confirmed that would be fine. “Anything else Baltazar?”
“Yeah, tell me how to pick a lock in the dark.” Lewis knew it was a joke question. Two clicks, he was gone.
Susanna looked at Pero and Heep and said, “You are both crazy. Al-Qaeda before and now you are going up against die Stasi?”
“Look, Susanna, I didn’t want this deal, but we’re in it. I did, yes I did put my friends in danger back in Kenya. I still cannot forgive myself for that, even though they agreed to it,” he looked at Heep, who was nodding, “and yes, thank God they supported me. We won, in the end, but people were hurt. I am still sad about what could have happened. But the truth is, if I can do good in the world, it is what my father once called my duty to do so.” Pero sat on the edge of the desk, a little exhausted. The memory of the risks taken in Kenya still weighed heavily on him. “But we have a chance here. We have a sample of some paper bits in heavy water—the stuff in the water is radioactive, and it was stuck to some gold being sent from the US Treasury to Switzerland. Apparently, they swap gold all the time, different types, different needs. Anyway, there’s this portion of a paper label—that’s what Arnold said—Arnold from the US embassy who stuck the damn thing in my coat pocket without me knowing. Okay, the gold label and radioactivity … As soon as the Swiss spot and tag it, all hell breaks loose. Days after, but maybe the same day, a man deliberately puts in motion a sequence that will result in my being in Berlin, vulnerable and exposed and not knowing a damn thing. Think about it, it’s brilliant. The CIA think they have a clandestine operative, me, and send me to do a simple job. But I was not clandestine, the bad guys are working with knowledge from someone else at the CIA or State. Their intel from someone in DC marked me, only me, to them, and so anything I do is, in effect, transparent to them. Then Station in Berlin, that’s the CIA desk person here, changes the plan and has Arnold give me the package. Okay, they think, now get the package. But I don’t have the package and meanwhile Station and her police escort—and a friend of mine—were chased down the autobahn and possibly killed. Stasi behave in Stasi ways, too heavy-handed for the new Germany. You heard him …” he pointed to the tape recorder, “Tische as much as said so.
