Scorpion Trail

by Archer, Jeffrey

  'I'm sorry,' Konrad whispered, his fingers feeling on each side of her neck for the throb of the carotid artery. Sensing the pulse through his thumbs, he pressed with all his strength.

  'Believe me, I did not want this . . .'he added through clenched teeth.

  Her nut-brown eyes stayed locked on his until her lids began to flicker and she blacked out. Slowly her face turned a purpley blue.

  Twenty-five

  Tuesday 5th April, 7.20 a.m.

  London-Heathrow Airport

  The BA 214 from Boston landed ahead of schedule. Chauffeurs and minicab drivers on the early shift hovered outside the arrivals hall holding name cards. Amongst them was a short man with a florid complexion, wearing a grey suit, white shirt and dark, nondescript tie.

  Inside the hall, Liam Doyle carried his shoulder bag through immigration and customs in a daze. He'd done the sensible thing on the flight across the Atlantic, turning down all offers of alcohol, but despite that he had a thick head this morning and eyeballs that felt as if they'd been smeared with Vaseline. He wore a light trench coat over a midweight, brown suit. His curly, grey hair was brushed across the top of his head to cover a bald patch.

  Things had happened so fast yesterday afternoon, he'd hardly had time to think. The letter delivered to the Committee office by the older Donohue sister, the phone call to Belfast to tell them about the photograph, and the plea from Nolan that it be brought across overnight by hand.

  He emerged from the baggage hall and followed other passengers past the waiting faces. Then he paused to read the name boards held by the drivers.

  'That's me,' he announced, approaching the short man with the florid face.

  'Mr Doyle of Emerald Finance?' His accent was from south of Dublin.

  'That's right.'

  The driver offered to take his bag, but Doyle refused. They walked to the car park and were soon on their way round the perimeter road to the north side of the airport.

  'It's another hour before your man gets in from Belfast,' the driver explained. 'I'll bring him to you at the hotel.'

  'I guess that gives me time for a shower,' Doyle remarked in his softly sterile New England voice.

  The Post House was one of the older Heathrow Hotels. Not as plush as some, but cheaper than most and reassuringly anonymous. The driver hovered by the desk while Doyle checked in, waiting to learn his room number.

  'Nine-two-three,' the man from Boston announced. 'You'll bring him straight up?'

  'Just as soon as his plane lands.'

  The Belfast flight was twenty minutes late, due to a glitch in the security checks when they were loading the luggage.

  Tommy Nolan felt as tense as a brick, but forced his face to relax as they filed past the Special Branch men who watched all arrivals from Ulster. He avoided eye contact and passed without trouble.

  Deadly job. The Met bastards couldn't hope to remember any but the most current of mugshots.

  Nolan's involvement with the Provos had declined since the 1970s when he'd been a company commander in the Whiterock area of Belfast. The breakup of the structure into cells had left him on the sidelines.

  Nolan wore a dull, tweed jacket and baggy, bottlegreen cords. He had crinkly, black hair which always looked greasy, and a broad, stress-worn face with watery brown eyes that made him look older than his forty-four years.

  By day he drove a taxi, by night he hogged a seat in Dunphy's Bar, talking about the old days. Talking too, often as not, about his younger brother Kieran, shot dead by the RUC during the failed Long Keshjail break in 1973.

  More than twenty years ago, but after a few years it still felt like yesterday.

  In Republican Belfast, Tommy Nolan was known as the man who'd pledged to 'top' the tout who'd put his kid brother in Milltown cemetery, but in twenty years had failed to find him.

  Last night's transatlantic phone call had been pure adrenalin. The man he'd sworn to kill had finally broken coven just in the nick of time before they called an end to hostilities.

  The man in the chauffeur's grey suit had no need of a name card this time.

  Nolan was his cousin.

  At the Post House Hotel, Nolan went alone to Doyle's room. Had to hammer at the door because the American had fallen asleep.

  'You Tommy?' Doyle asked bleary-eyed, opening it on the chain.

  'That's right.' Nolan replied in his tortured Belfast brogue.

  'Sorry, sorry,' Doyle yawned. He slipped the chain and pulled the door wide. 'I guess I just passed out. I'm flying back this afternoon, so I'm staying with Boston time. And according to my brain, that means I should still be asleep.'

  Nolan's head hurt from the Bushmills he'd drunk to steady his nerves last night. He didn't want conversation, just the picture.

  'This is the shot,' Doyle announced, handing him the photograph taken on Lorna's Nikon. 'Pretty good, huh?'

  'Tommy Nolan held it in his shaking hands. Hard to reconcile this middle-aged, bearded figure with the lanky twenty-eight-year-old whose picture he'd kept in the tin box under his bed.

  'Is that her with him?' he growled.

  'It certainly is. But she wasn't involved, right? She was betrayed by him just as much as you were.'

  'So what's she doin' with him here then?' he demanded, smacking the print with the back of his right hand.

  'Posing for a picture, that's all. She was the one who sent it to us, don't forget ... just like she did with the last photo, the one from 1973. She's not to be touched, okay?'

  Nolan reined in his feelings. He'd always reckoned the Donohue woman just as much to blame for his brother's death as the man Jarvis.

  'And this was in Bosnia, you said?' Nolan asked. 'There's no ways I'd go there to look for him.'

  'You don't have to. As I told you yesterday, he's in Frankfurt, Germany.

  Annie Donohue made some check calls with Lorna's office. The guy's been leaving messages for her. Here's the name of his hotel and the phone number.'

  He handed Nolan a page from a notebook.

  'Can't say for sure he's still there, but you can easily check.'

  Nolan felt a nervous bubbling in his guts. The trail that chilled so many years ago was hot again. The blood throbbed painfully in his temples.

  Half-an-hour later, the Irish driver parked outside a terraced house in the West London district of Chiswick and rang the doorbell of a ground floor flat. A man in his mid-twenties with dark hair and designer stubble let them in. The driver made the introductions.

  'Michael McCarthy - Tommy Nolan.'

  'Hello.'

  'Are youse Michael or Mickey?' Nolan asked matily.

  He wasn't at ease with the new generation of hard young men who ran the " operation on the mainland.

  'Michael's my name,' McCarthy replied coldly. He led them into a cluttered back room adjoining the kitchen.

  'A quick cup of tea, Michael, and I'll be out of your hair,' the driver muttered, gravitating towards the stove.

  'Fix it for all of us, will you?' McCarthy pulled chairs from under a dining table that had been picked up cheap at an auction.

  'We'll talk the business after he's gone,' he whispered, jerking a thumb towards the kitchen. 'How was your flight? No bother?'

  'Och, none at all.' Nolan looked round the room. A clothes airer propped against the radiator had a woman's underwear hung out to dry. 'Nice place. Youse got a wife, then?'

  The younger man looked away and ground his teeth. They'd no idea of security these old boys. Didn't understand the rules of war.

  'Listen Tommy, all you need to know about me is my name. Right?'

  Nolan felt bruised. just trying to be friendly. He shrugged.

  'As you like.'

  They sat in silence until the tea came. Then for the five minutes it took the driver to drink it, they nattered about horse racing and football.

  When the latch closed behind him and they'd heard the car rev away, Nolan pulled the photograph of Alex from his jacket pocket. McCarthy gave it a cu
rsory glance, then spread open a road atlas of Europe.

  Frankfurt 8.30 a.m.

  Kommissar Linz looked as if he'd slept little, his top shirt button undone and his bow tie crooked. Lorna wanted to straighten it, but restrained, herself. He'd taken them to an interview room on the ground floor of the police headquarters.

  'At nine o'clock, Fraulein Pocklewicz will walk out of here,' he explained edgily. 'I will come to the door with her. Then it is up to you. We have given her a train ticket to Berlin. She may go direct to the station, so you have not much time.'

  'And she's still admitting nothing?' Alex queried.

  'She has not said one word since yesterday afternoon.'

  'Then I doubt she'll speak to us.'

  Linz opened a folder, preoccupied. 'Does this picture help?' he asked. He produced a computer print of two identical faces, one wearing spectacles, the other not.

  'That's him!' Alex exclaimed. 'Without the glasses.' The cold, hard eyes left him in no doubt. 'He's the man who shot Vildana. This is Pravic? Where did the picture come from?'

  'The United Nations, so they tell me.' Linz looked sceptical. 'Our computer experts removed his spectacles for him.'

  'But where was it taken?'

  'They will not say. But ... but I can tell you that since last night the interest in Herr Pravic has grown,' he added enigmatically.

  'Really? Why?'

  'New information. From the intelligence agencies. They think he will try to attack Muslims in Germany ... maybe with some chemical weapon,' he explained vaguely.

  'What? Bloody hell!'

  'Ya. It is not easy to believe. But this morning I must go to Munchen.'

  'He's been seen there or what?'

  'No. But tomorrow one thousand Muslim Fundamentalists meet in that city.

  It could be the perfect target for him. Now I must show Fraulein Pocklewicz to the door. I give you my mobile number to call if she tells you something.'

  He handed Alex a card.

  Rain was pelting down outside on the broad pavement. Alex wore his Barbour and tweed cap, Lorna the anorak she'd used in Bosnia. They looked like hillwalkers who'd wandered into the city by mistake.

  'This is crazy,' Lorna complained, as the rain soaked her sneakers.

  'She'll tell us to get lost.'

  Linz appeared at the door of the monolithic police station. Alex recognized the woman from the identity parade. Linz reached out his hand, but she turned her back on him.

  'What are you going to say to her?' Lorna hissed.

  'Whatever I can find the words for, in German Alex muttered.

  As Gisela tottered away on her high heels, shoulders hunched against the rain, Alex fell in beside her, Lorna at his shoulder.

  'Frdulein Pockletécz?' he began, touching her on the elbow. 'Ein Moment, bitte! Darf Ich mit Anen sprechen?

  She stopped, startled.

  'Now what?' She looked them up and down. 'The Kommissar's let me go.'

  'Ali, but we're not the police,' Alex explained in German. 'You know Vildana? The girl who was shot? We are the people who got her out of Bosnia. We thought we were bringing her to safety, then this happened.

  The thing is, we're scared that Milan, your friend, will try again to kill her.'

  'I don't know anyone called Milan,' she replied doggedly. She pulled her arm free. 'Piss off.'

  She stomped away, terror growing. Too many people after her. Pravic, the police - and worst of all, Dunkel. She'd heard that a man of his description had hung around her house most of Sunday. And now these two weirdos, clinging like leeches.

  'Look I know you were there ... I saw you,' Alex snapped. 'You were sitting in the car, down the road from the house. Before the shooting.' He spat out the words in chunks ignoring the complexities of grammar. 'You had those earrings on.'

  It was a guess, but he seemed to recollect the Indian-looking bangles. With luck she wouldn't remember anyway.

  She faltered, putting a hand to her ear, then marched on again.

  'Don't know what you're on about,' she muttered, looking round for a taxi.

  'You want the girl to be killed?' Alex shouted.

  Gisela ignored him.

  'That's what'll happen unless Milan is stopped.' He got her by the arm again. 'You may be the only person who can save her life, do you know that?'

  'Fuck off! I can't even save my own life, let alone anybody else's.'

  She looked petrified, vulnerable.

  'Is that it? You're scared he'll kill you if you talk?'

  She didn't answer.

  'Don't you see? If you help us get him locked up, you'll be safe.'

  'Look, do something useful, will you?' she answered eventually. 'Tell me where the sodding station is.' They'd reached a crossroads, that was devoid of signposts.

  'We'll take you there. In a taxi,' Alex answered.

  Lorna had understood nothing except that the woman wasn't cooperating.

  'We need a cab, quick,' Alex muttered to her out of the side of his mouth.

  'Look, I've told you ...'

  Lorna hailed a cream Mercedes and it pulled into the kerb.

  Alex put his arm round Gisela's shoulders. He could see her resolve was weakening.

  'Come on. You're soaked.'

  The rain had turned her hair into a mop of black string. Grudgingly she let herself be nudged into the car.

  'Zum Hauptbahnhof, bitte!'

  They slid onto the back seat, the hooker wedged in the middle.

  'Who are you?' she demanded.

  'As I said, we were in Bosnia,' he whispered, suspecting the driver might be Yugoslav. 'I met Milan's brother there. He is a priest, did you know that?'

  'He never talked about his family . . .'

  Progress. At least she was admitting she knew him.

  'You remember the Tulici massacre?'

  Oh yes, she remembered. And how Pravic had used Tulici as an excuse for shooting the girl. She nodded.

  'Milan did it. Killed all those women and kids. That's what his brother thinks. The UN wants to put him on trial. You know that? We work for the UN...' Alex added quickly. 'Not for the police, you understand. Whatever you tell us, we won't pass it on to the police, I promise.'

  He saw her suck her lower lip to stop it trembling.

  'But I don't know where he is. . .' she said plaintively.

  'Okay, but we'll talk, yes? At the station. A cup of coffee?'

  'Na, wenn Sie wollen,' she shrugged.

  Alex nodded to Lorna. They were getting somewhere.

  Three minutes later the taxi pulled up by the main entrance. They'd been almost within walking distance.

  They sat on high stools, their coffee cups perched on a little shelf Gisela's hands shook. Normally she carried speed in her bag, but she'd dumped the tablets down the toilet when the police came for her yesterday morning.

  'Where did you last see him?' Alex asked.

  She held the cup of sour liquid in both hands and sipped. Her head was like spaghetti. Couldn't think straight any more.

  'Frankfurt Airport,' she replied. 'He could be anywhere by now. Maybe back in Bosnia even.'

  'Did he say anything about wanting to ... to kill more Muslims?' he probed.

  'He's at war with them. That's what he said. Even here in Germany.'

  Alex translated this to Lorna.

  'So Kommissar Linz may be right about Munich!' she exclaimed in dismay.

  Alex wasn't so sure. There was something about the effort Pravic had made to find Vildana ... The man must be obsessed with the need to kill her. A fixation that would still be there, once he realized the girl wasn't dead.

  He turned back to Gisela. 'By now, Milan must know that Vildana's still alive,' he suggested in German. 'What do you think he'll do about it?'

  In her mind, Gisela heard the shots again, felt the back-blast, remembered the certainty that he would kill her too if his survival depended on it.

  'He won't forget her. He'll be back for the girl, wherever
she is,' she said chillingly.

  'So we've got to stop him, right?' Alex implored. 'You nuist help us.'

  'But what can I do?' she snivelled. 'I tell you I don't know where he is!'

  'No. Okay. I understand.' Then he remembered what Linz had said. 'Tell me, does Milan just have the gun, or ... or something else perhaps? Some chemical, poison maybe?'

  Poison? The word shot through her like a glass-sliver. Her pencilled eyebrows bunched in consternation.

  Last night in the isolation of the detention cell, kept awake by the wailings of drunks, dark, disjointed thoughts had marshalled in her mind, linked by some invisible thread. The thoughts were to do with Dunkel, with the Stasi, with Leipzig, with Zagreb and with what she'd read in the papers about the scientist Kernmer who'd killed himself.

  'What d'you mean, poison?' she queried.

  'I don't know. Something that could kill hundreds of people at once.'

  The spectre in Gisela's mind took on flesh.

  'Why? Why do you ask about that?' she asked querulously.

  Alex hesitated. Had Linz told him about it in confidence? Too late now.

  'The police think Milan has some biological weapon and he'll use it in Munich. There's a big meeting of Muslims there tomorrow.

  Fundamentalists.' He said the last word in English, not knowing the German.

  Gisela stared at the wall. The thread in her head tugged itself from the tangle and formed into a word.

  'Milzbrand!

  'What?' Alex gaped.

  'What's she saying for God's sake?' Lorna nudged. 'Can't you translate?'

  'Anthrax! She's talking about anthrax,' he whispered. 'You remember the story in the paper yesterday?'

  He turned to Gisela again, incredulous. Travic? He has something to do with that anthrax business?'

  Gisela nodded dumbly, then corrected herself by shaking her head.

  'I don't know. But I think it's possible.'

  'How? What's the link between him and the Leipzig man?'

  She turned her head to face him.

  'Herr Dunkel - he's the link. Don't know his real name, but he came to see me two weeks ago. I've known him many years. Used to be Stasi. Used to pay me to find people who would steal things, people who would kill, if the money was right. This time he asked me to find Milan. Needed him for some job in Zagreb; wouldn't tell me what. When he came again a few days later, he'd driven up to Berlin from Leipzig.' Gisela covered her mouth with a hand. 'I shouldn't be telling you this.'