Born to Die in Berlin: A Thriller

by Alex Carlson

  The pain in his shoulder was searing and sharp on top of a deep, thudding ache. He realized he had been shot. He lay on his back, trying to master the pain and catch his breath. When he mustered the guts to rise, he turned to his side and rose to his knees, but was rewarded with a boot pounding into his ribs. A second later, his gun was kicked from his hand.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Rhys was vaguely aware that three men surrounded him. How they got there so fast, he didn’t know. Had he passed out? He focused his eyes and saw Petrov, McClellum, and Mahmoud. They looked absurd from his position lying flat on his back. Petrov’s legs were ridiculously long, McClellum looked pudgy and his body was devoid of any tension. Mahmoud looked simply diabolical, with crazed eyes looking down at him.

  He turned and scooted to the wall and was able to sit with his back against it. It provided little relief, but he felt less vulnerable, or at least less pathetic.

  “Why?” he asked. “Is it worth it, Petrov?”

  “Is it worth it? Why, yes, of course it is. Ambassador McClellum and I are going to change the world. Isn’t that right, Terry?”

  McClellum was despondent, full of fear and confusion. He couldn’t fake that look and it confirmed that he had been a stooge all along.

  “Of course, Terry doesn’t fully understand exactly how we are changing the world. I have been telling him all along that the Kremlin is reconsidering our position in Syria. That is true. We have stood by as Assad has done ghastly things, including gassing his own people.”

  “Sending more chemical weapons into the war zone isn’t going to change anything.”

  “Oh, but it is. We are not delivering it to Assad’s forces. No, Assad’s forces are going to be the victims of it, courtesy of the Americans’ new friends, the Salqin Brigade.” Petrov paused. He looked expectantly, hoping that McClellum and Rhys would understand the implications. Rhys got it. “Once Assad’s forces are the victims and the evidence points to the Salqin Brigade as the perpetrators,” Petrov continued, “the Americans will back out, completely and forever. Your friend the president, Terry, can’t handle the pressure.”

  McClellum still looked as though he didn’t understand. He was still struggling with the notion that the cargo they had been handling was not an insecticide as Petrov had said.

  “But it gets better, and this is where you, Terry, and that informant of yours fit in.” Rhys knew Petrov was talking about Bashir. “Even you, Mr. Adler, will be corroborating evidence. Once the investigations begin, the dots will lead them back here, to Berlin, and to the Blue Crescent Mosque. Mahmoud here has seen to it that there is evidence, even photos, of Bashir worshipping at the mosque and his connection to you and Lucinda Stirewalt will prove his CIA bonafides. Yes, it wasn’t hard for us to realize that Bashir was connected to the CIA.

  “But not only Bashir,” Petrov continued. “You, Terry. We took photos of you with the gas in Rostock, though they aren’t as useful now. But we also have photos of you here, at Tempelhof, thanks to our stop here on our tour. And I’m quite sure my photographer got pictures of you as we loaded the plane here tonight.

  “Your enthusiasm about becoming more involved in the situation in Syria, which I understand you shared with the president, will complete the line of dots. From the Salqin Brigade to the Blue Crescent Mosque to Bashir and the CIA to the American ambassador to his personal friend, the president of the United States.”

  Rhys could barely listen to more of it. He tried to sit comfortably. He supported his weight on his good arm, his left, which was directly behind him.

  He saw how expertly Petrov had played it and how Petrov’s plan revolved around a dunce of an American ambassador. The West will be shown to have made available poison gas—German manufactured and American delivered—to their new friends in Syria, which would be used against Assad’s forces. The result would be intense international outrage and the US would be forced to abandon its growing involvement in the region. The Russians would have free range to dictate their terms. Their influence in the Middle East would be supreme.

  Rhys considered the futility of it all. “But you failed, Petrov. The gas is stuck on the tarmac and your plane has no pilot. You might kill me, but you’re not going to kill an American ambassador.”

  “We don’t need to. We have enough on Terry to keep him quiet. And Mahmoud will clean up the tarmac, including the gas canisters. We’ll fly it out in the coming days. A mere delay, really.”

  “Mahmoud might clean up the tarmac, but he won’t find everything.”

  “No?”

  “No. He’d notice a Makarov was missing.” In a blurring speed, Rhys whipped around from his belt in back the Makarov he had picked up on the Tarmac and shot a single bullet into Mahmoud’s head. The impact froze the neurological impulses in his brain and his legs locked up, causing his body to collapse backwards, his tall body falling like a tree in the forest.

  Rhys pointed the gun at Petrov.

  Petrov tried to show calm. “The significance of killing a Russian ambassador is no less than killing an American ambassador.”

  “Do you think I care much at this point? I’m planning on disappearing anyway.” He centered the gun.

  “Rhys, Stop!” The voice was loud and authoritative. It came from a distance. Rhys turned his head and saw Stirewalt. She entered the baggage claim with Hernandez and Colin and half a dozen operatives. They flooded the area and Colin stepped between Rhys and Petrov. He calmly reached for the gun and Rhys had no strength left to prevent him from taking it out of his hand.

  CIA agents escorted McClellum away, one under each arm. Rhys doubted the ambassador could have walked under his own power. He was muttering nonsense, a typical reaction to shock. A large wet stain could be seen at his crotch as urine dripped down his pant leg.

  Rhys had lost all strength. His shoulder had gone numb, a feeling that was spreading throughout his upper body. He didn’t know how much blood he had lost, but the floor beneath him was wet. Not a good sign. He just sat and watched as Stirewalt stepped before Petrov. A smile appeared on her face, one that Rhys couldn’t interpret. It was conspiratorial, or at least the two shared an understanding.

  “You are free to go, Mr. Ambassador,” she said. Her smile was joyous now. “We will be in touch.”

  Rhys was incredulous. “What? Lucinda, No! Don’t let him get away with this. We have evidence!”

  But Stirewalt ignored him. His head swirled and he wondered if it wasn’t McClellum who was treasonously ambitious, but Stirewalt.

  And then he passed out.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Berlin’s newspapers never quite got the story right. Reports of shots fired at Tempelhof Airport led to a massive police response. The biggest fear was a mass shooting at the refugee center located in the terminal’s western wing. The Tagesspiegel reported that investigators found nothing at the center and they proceeded to inspect the rest of the terminal, though after much delay. While they found considerable blood and evidence of gunshots, they recovered no bodies or slugs. Separately, the Berliner Zeitung reported that neighbors heard a plane land and take off in the middle of the night. Again, this could not be corroborated.

  Although unreported, a Sukhoi Su-80 did land at dawn at the United States Air Force Base in Ramstein, not far from Kaiserslautern. The plane taxied into a hangar and was never seen again. However, numerous caskets and a hazardous materials transporter were later seen leaving the hangar. No explanation was given.

  Rhys struggled to read the papers two days after the incident. His right arm and shoulder area were secure in a cast and turning the pages with his left hand sent shards of pain through his upper body. He had been fortunate. The bullet passed through his shoulder without causing skeletal damage or nipping an artery. The entry wound was small and was quickly sewn up after it was cleansed and disinfected. The exit wound in back was more serious and painful. It required a graft with skin from his thigh. The shoulder pain was deep, fierce, and throbbing, but i
t was localized. More generally, the painkillers produced nausea, headaches, and a general feeling of misery. He immediately resisted taking them.

  “They are necessary,” said the American nurse who managed his recovery in Clayallee’s medical complex. “Your body needs to relax in order to promote circulation and it can’t relax when you’re in pain.”

  Rhys grumbled and reluctantly agreed to take the damn things on the condition that today, on this day only, he could go without them. He needed to be clear-headed. He had to understand and he needed to articulate clearly. After today, he’d take as many as the nurse thought fit. The nurse, also reluctant, agreed to the deal.

  When Stirewalt arrived, She closed the door behind her and locked it. There were no greetings and Rhys just watched as she took off her coat and sat down in the chair next to the foot of his bed.

  Rhys looked at her without expression, but his anger was palpable.

  “You don’t like what transpired at the airport,” she said. “You have questions.”

  Rhys said nothing. If she had stopped by the day before he would have jumped off the bed and pummeled her into the floor, regardless of how much pain it caused him. Today he was in control.

  “Sometimes we can’t cause an international scene. We had to make it go away.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Sure you made it go away—the newspapers know nothing—but preventing an international scene had nothing to do with it.”

  “No?”

  “Stirewalt, this whole thing, from beginning to end, had Agency written all over it.”

  Now it was her turn to be quiet.

  “You’re not denying it?”

  She still said nothing. Maybe she’d confirm what he had figured out, but she wasn’t going to reveal anything.

  “Okay, let me tell you what I think. Break in when I’ve gotten something wrong.”

  Silence again, but she had a barely perceptible smile on her face, almost as though she were hoping he’d figured it out.

  “This operation started the very moment McClellum landed in Germany. You knew he was an idiot and you understood how you could use him.”

  “Actually, it started before he landed. We hacked his computer as soon as his appointment was announced and saw his Amazon bills. He had a couple of hundred dollars worth of spy book on them. I knew Petrov would try to exploit McClellum’s interests in some way, so I communicated McClellum’s infatuation internally to Sarge, but through a channel that we knew the Russians had hacked.”

  “Because you already had the connection between the mosque and the Russians. I don’t know how you got that, but I’m guessing it was a combination of information from Bashir and intercepts from the Russian embassy courtesy of that little NSA shed on the embassy’s roof. Your whole operation was to turn the Russians’ operation on its head.”

  “Exactly. But you have to back up, Rhys. It started with Mahmoud. We knew he was a Russian asset. They sent him back to Syria and we followed him. He picked up some chemistry skills in Syria and then returned to Germany along the Balkan route as a refugee. We had him tracked the entire way. We followed him to the Blue Crescent Mosque and that’s how we learned of the connection between the mosque and the Russians. Then, we sent in Bashir knowing that Mahmoud would sniff out his CIA connection and would try to befriend him. When McClellum arrived, we made sure the Russians had something to work with on him, too. We knew they’d try to exploit their angles on Bashir and McClellum. We presented Petrov with an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.”

  Rhys had most of it, but he had difficulty believing how well Stirewalt had it planned out.

  “The Russians wanted Western fingerprints all over this,” continued Stirewalt. “They exploited the mosque, set the imam up with Hohlbein, who was sympathetic to the plight of the Syrians, and added Bashir’s CIA ties on top of that. They even brought McClellum to Rostock to take pictures of him loading the gas on the boat. They would have had photos of him at Tempelhof, but Hernandez took out the SVR photographer on the rooftop.”

  “Killed him?”

  “Shot the camera through the lens. The photographer was able to run away.”

  “That boy can shoot a little.”

  “We turned the tables. Petrov wanted to manufacture evidence of American involvement, but instead we have proof of Petrov’s involvement. While Hernandez was shooting photographers, Colin was photographing Petrov loading the canisters on the plane.”

  “Colin?”

  “You didn’t really think he had been demoted to McClellum’s driver, did you? He’s deputy chief of station. The chauffeur gig was just a cover.”

  Rhys digested the information. It fit together better than he had realized.

  “We have all the evidence of Petrov’s involvement stashed away at Ramstein.”

  “And that’s why you let him go.”

  “He wouldn’t do us any good if he were dead.”

  “So now you have the Russian ambassador in Berlin in your back pocket.”

  She smiled. It was her triumph.

  He had to smile, too. He remembered his initial assessment of her when she first stood in his apartment. She was young, which meant she must be very, very good. Now he had proof. She is good.

  The smile left her face. “For the record, we do think there is a connection between Petrov and Karen’s death. Arrows point to him, but we don’t have anything actionable. That complicates things and it’s frustrating, but we’re now in a position to squeeze him. Either he plays ball or we make his life hell. I may have played up that angle too strong at the beginning. I’m sorry. But I needed you.”

  “And McClellum?” Rhys asked, changing the subject.

  She understood his reluctance to talk about Karen and went along with his change in direction.

  “While the operation’s primary goal—landing Petrov—succeeded, the secondary goal failed. We had hoped something would rub off on McClellum and he’d be publicly embarrassed by some element of it. Or internally rebuked, maybe sent home. But he’s managed to gain from it. Only a handful of people in the Agency know about this operation, but McClellum has managed to let them hear of his involvement. He put his own spin on it, probably leaving out the fact that he pissed his pants.”

  Adler laughed. You couldn’t make this shit up. “And Sarge?”

  “That was why we wanted McClellum out. I hoped she’d be the next ambassador. It didn’t happen. It doesn’t really matter though. Sophia and I had him over to my office yesterday. The three of us watched the recording of his tryst at Maxime’s. Our running commentary put him in his place. He’s been sufficiently emasculated to get the message: stay out of our way or we’ll nail him. He and Sarge have all but switched offices. We have both ambassadors in our pocket.”

  Rhys was feeling better and marveled how good news worked just as well as painkillers.

  She had more good news. Lance Corporal Manuel Hernandez had been reassigned. He wouldn’t be going to Camp Lejeune for the Marine Corps’ Scout Sniper Basic Training but rather to The Farm, for basic training in the CIA’s special operations program. Stirewalt was thrilled and would request he be stationed in Berlin under her command.

  The one loose end was Bashir. He disappeared. No one had seen him since he ran off into the darkness of Tempelhof’s airfield. Rhys and Lucinda hoped he had orchestrated his disappearance himself. He probably had. His exposure had been significant, with both the Russians and the Blue Crescent Mosque learning that he had CIA ties. Bashir knew disappearing might just be his best option. Rhys hoped that he’d left the city. He’d get Agency help if he wanted it, but thus far his whereabouts were a mystery.

  Lucinda prepared to leave. Before putting on her coat, she handed him a check. “For your services. There’s extra to cover the cost of the motorcycle you lost.”

  “Yeah, and my other one needs a new headlight and has a few scratches I want taken out.”

  “I’m sure the check will cov
er it.”

  Rhys looked at it. It did. Immediately he thought of the new motorcycle he’d get. The best part of motorcycles was deciding which one you’d buy next. He’d probably get another F800GS, but he might upgrade to the Adventure model. He’d still like to take that trip to the top of Norway in June and the GSA would work perfectly.

  She interrupted his reverie. “A third objective developed over the course of the operation by the way.”

  He looked at her.

  “You’re a good operative, Rhys. It crossed my mind that we could use you on a more regular basis.”

  Rhys didn’t know if he wanted to commit, but the whole experience made him feel more alive than he had in ages. Maybe he had helped make the world a little safer. He wasn’t sure about that.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what. I’m not planning on leaving Berlin, so if you need me, I just might be willing to knock around for a bit.”

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  About the author

  Alex Carlson grew up in New England with a hunger to explore the world. He has lived in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, and Jordan, and has degrees from Georgetown University, Cambridge University, and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. His professional career has ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, including stints as a valet parker at a five-star hotel, an operative for a private investigator, a university professor, and a researcher for a private global intelligence firm. He lives in Germany with his perfect wife and two sons.