Rules of Deception (20 page)

40

Marcus von Daniken tossed
a dossier onto the desk. “Not exactly the manpower I was hoping for,” he said. “But you’ll do.”

He looked at the four men seated around the table. None had slept a wink in the last thirty-six hours. A welter of empty coffee mugs attested to their hypercaffeinated state. The glaring overhead lights didn’t help much either.

To his usual crew of Myer, Krajcek, and Seiler, he’d added Klaus Hardenberg, an investigator from the financial crimes division. After a few minutes of bantering, they’d decided to call themselves a task force, in spite of their limited numbers. It would make it easier to explain the long hours to their wives, even if they were forbidden from discussing the focus of their work.

Von Daniken didn’t bother to flatter them that they were the best men in his department.

“Let’s start with questions,” he said, sliding into a chair. “Anything that’s bothering you, let’s hear it.”

The voices came at him fast and furious. Who did he think killed Lammers? What was the connection between him and Blitz/Quitab? If Quitab was an Iranian officer, shouldn’t they forward his name to all friendly agencies to check for any background information? Had any evidence beyond the terrorist’s confession been found linking Walid Gassan with Blitz/Quitab and Lammers? Did they have any idea of Gassan’s activities during his passage through Switzerland a month earlier? Which airport was the most likely target? And what about the American, Ransom? Where did he fit in? What should they make of his killing the two police officers in Landquart? Might he have had time to kill Lammers the same day his wife died?

Finally, there was a question posed in various forms by all the men present: Why did Marti have his head stuck so far up his ass?

Von Daniken was unable to answer any of the questions, and his ignorance highlighted the fault that ran through the center of the investigation. Essentially, they knew nothing about the conspirators or the plot.

It came down to one thing: there was too much to do and too little time to do it.

Von Daniken divided the inquiries into four areas. Finance. Communications. Field investigation. And transportation. He would take finance. His experience as a member of the Holocaust Commission had left him with a raft of acquaintances and contacts, as well as a few friends in the banking establishment.

“We’ll start with the Villa Principessa,” he said. “That’s no squatter’s hovel in Hamburg. It takes real money to set up digs there.”

It would be his job to find out who had leased it, for how long, and where the payments had come from. The key would be to discover where Blitz did his banking. Of all the threads, this one carried the potential for the greatest yield. Once it was discovered where he conducted his daily business, von Daniken could backtrack and trace the origin of funds transferred into the account. As importantly, he could see where monies were channeled afterward. In one direction the money trail would lead to Blitz’s paymasters—the organization or government underwriting his adventures. In the other, it would lead to his co-conspirators.

Klaus Hardenberg would cover the second line of inquiry, focusing on credit. Von Daniken said he wanted all records for Blitz, Lammers, and Ransom over the past twelve months. Tracking their expenditures would yield invaluable information about their daily activities and provide a road map as to their whereabouts during the past twelve months.

Lammers would be the easiest of the three. Five charge cards had been found in his wallet. In order to avoid deportation, his wife was cooperating with their inquiries.

Blitz was another story. No wallet or identification had been found in his home. However, by a stroke of luck, one page of his December Eurocard statement had slipped beneath the credenza in his home office. The charge card would yield a credit history, along with banking references and some form of national identification number.

The jury was still out on Ransom. Immigration had only just come back with his details. As of this moment, Ransom’s passport number and Social Security number were being run through Interpol and forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center.

Kurt Myer was in charge of communications. He’d begun work upon returning from Ascona. “Swisscom is sending over a list of all calls made from Blitz’s home in the last six months,” he reported. “We’ve already got Lammers’s list for the same period. First, we’ll cross the two and see if they have any friends in common. Then we’ll go back a level and take a look at all calls made to and from their correspondents. We should have the first reports by seven in the morning.”

“Good,” said von Daniken. Five years earlier, he’d been instrumental in passing into law a requirement that telecommunications companies keep a six-month call log for every registered number. “After you run the two lists, isolate all cellular numbers and see if we can find some similar names. If they’re using SIM cards, trace the numbers back to their point of sale.”

“I can guarantee we’ll find some similar names,” said Myer. “It’s just a question of how careful they were. Everybody makes mistakes.”

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed that they’re not registered to foreign telecoms,” said von Daniken.

Krajcek rolled his eyes. “Pray not the Germans.”

No one protected their citizens’ privacy more ferociously than the Federal Republic of Germany.

Finance and communication worked collaboratively. Once von Daniken’s inquiries into the suspects’ finances began to pay off, all related phone numbers would be passed along to Myer. Each and every hit would be fed into a predictive software program that used the data to map a “web of relationships” neatly illustrating Blitz’s and Lammers’s socioeconomic lives.

Von Daniken grabbed a cup of espresso in the break area—two sugars, twist of lemon—and downed it in two swallows. It was ten p.m. and he’d been awake for thirty-eight hours. His fatigue, however, had been replaced with a quiet optimism. In the beginning, everything was possible.

He looked at the empty coffee cup. Then again, maybe it was the caffeine boosting his spirits.

He slapped his hand on the desk to get their attention. “Mr. Krajcek will be visiting with our field agents in Geneva, Basel, and Zurich tomorrow, won’t you?”

“First thing.”

For the past three years, the Service for Analysis and Prevention had been running agents inside the country’s most important mosques. Most were volunteers, Muslims angered by the way their religion had been hijacked by fundamentalists. Others were more reluctant and had to be pressed into service by threats of deportation to their home country. The take had yielded critical intelligence about smuggled RPGs, AK-47’s, and a network of hawala—or money transfer—agents used by an Algerian terror cell operating out of France, Switzerland, and northern Italy.

“Concentrate on finding someone who visited with Gassan during his recent transit through Geneva,” von Daniken said. “I want contacts, places visited, where he holed up, and any mentions of his intent.”

All this Krajcek wrote furiously in his notepad.

Von Daniken turned to the next in line. “And now, Mr. Hardenberg…”

Hardenberg tried to smile, but succeeded only in looking like he was passing a kidney stone. He was fat, middle-aged, and pudding-faced with heavy tortoiseshell glasses that shielded shy brown eyes and a head as bald as an ice cube. And he was, bar none, the meanest, most dogged investigator von Daniken had ever come across. His nickname was the “Rottweiler.”

“You’re going to find the Volkswagen van that Gassan used to take delivery of the plastic explosives in Leipzig. My money says that it’s being used to transport the drone as well. Find the van and we find our men.”

It was a brief instruction masking a gargantuan task. Hardenberg cleared his throat and nodded. Without another word, he stood and left the room. No one believed for a second that he was going home. Every rental car company, automobile sales lot, and government agency was closed for the night, but Hardenberg would be at his desk until morning figuring the best way to begin his attack when they opened for business tomorrow.

Last, but not least, came Max Seiler. His mandate was twofold. First, using Lammers’s passports as a starting point, he was to note all entry and exit stamps found inside and reconstruct Lammers’s frequent trips. At the same time, they would ask all major airlines to run a passenger flight manifest check for Lammers, Blitz, and Ransom, and all known aliases of the above, during the last year. Seiler’s discoveries might not help find the drone, but they would go a long way toward establishing a case against the paymasters behind the planned attack.

Von Daniken pushed his chair back from the table. “Time to get to work.”

41

Goppenstein, altitude fifteen hundred meters,
population three thousand, sat nestled in the craw of the Lötsch Valley. The town had no historic or scenic claims. If it was known at all, it was as the southern terminus of a 12.5-kilometer railway tunnel that passed through the Lötschberg and linked the canton of Bern and, as such, northern Switzerland, with the canton of Valais to the south.

Built in 1911, the tunnel was a relic. Only one train at a time could traverse its length. There was no escape or “carcass” tunnel, as was customary in modern construction. Only at either end did it widen enough to accommodate two sets of tracks, and that for just a thousand meters. But it was a crucial relic. Each day the train ferried more than two thousand cars, trucks, and motorcycles through the mountain.

After paying the fare of twenty-six francs, the Ghost guided his automobile into the holding area. Lane markers had been painted onto the asphalt and numbered one through six. The first two lanes were full, a mix of cars and eighteen-wheel international transports. A man in a fluorescent orange vest motioned for him to pull into lane three.

The train lay beyond the parking lot. Instead of passenger cars, there were flatbeds with a spindly steel awning providing protection against the elements. An endless succession stretched past the station and into the darkness beyond. It reminded him of a snake poking its head out of a cave. A great, rusty, reticulated snake.

He checked the clock. Nine minutes remained until the train was due to depart.

The Ghost watched in his rearview mirror as Ransom pulled into the lane three cars behind him. He tapped the steering wheel with his palm. Everything was in order.

He opened the glove compartment, took out his pistol, attached a silencer and muzzle suppressor, then set it on the seat beside him. From around his neck, he freed the vial. He recited the prayer slowly and with passion, hearing the sound of far-off drums beating in the rain forest. One after another, he anointed the bullets in the poison. Certain that the soul of his victim could not follow him into this world, the Ghost finished loading his gun.

He waited.

A green light flashed.
Engines turned over. Brake lights blinked. A procession of vehicles began loading onto the train. The lanes to his right cleared. The car directly ahead jerked forward. Jonathan drove up a brief grade, then onto the flatbed. He advanced down the narrow platform, passing from one car to the next farther toward the head of the train. A low barrier was erected on either side of the carriage, and above it a railing flagged with signs instructing drivers to employ the emergency brake and stating that it was forbidden to leave the automobile. Headlights illuminated a confined space, and he had the impression of plunging through a rifle barrel.

He brought the Mercedes to a halt at the head of his carriage, five or six feet behind the car ahead of him. Up and down the train, drivers killed their engines. Minutes passed. Finally the train lurched and began to move, shuddering to life like a sleepy animal. The rhythmic stamping of the ties increased in tempo. The mountains drew closer, hemming in the tracks. He heard the hush of the approaching tunnel. His ears popped from the change in air pressure. The train seemed to rush forward as it entered the pitch darkness.

Jonathan’s eyes were open, but he couldn’t see a thing. He rode this way for a while, and in the dark he saw Emma’s face. She was looking at him over her shoulder. “Follow me,” she said, and her voice echoed inside him. His chin bounced off his chest and he woke with a start. He looked at the analog clock. The tritium hands showed that he’d dozed for five minutes. He snapped to attention and flipped on the overhead light.

He removed the documentation about Zug Industriewerk from the briefcase. First, he reread the memo from Hoffmann to Eva Kruger about Thor.
“…final shipment to client will be made on 10.2.”
Something about the date bothered him. The tenth was in three days. Then it hit him. Emma had been due to go to Copenhagen for two days for a regional DWB meeting. For the first time, he was forced to evaluate her actions through a warped lens. Had she really planned on going to Denmark? Or did she have something else in mind? Something arranged by Blitz or Hoffmann or some other unknown character from her double life.

He turned his attention to the glossy company brochure. A photograph inside the front cover depicted a prim three-story headquarters building and a sprawling factory attached to it. He flipped past photos of impressive silver machines and colleagues engaged in oppressively earnest conversation.

“Zug Industriewerk was founded in 1911 by Werner Stutz as a manufacturer of precision gun barrels,”
read a brief history of the firm.
“By the early 1930s, Mr. Stutz had expanded the firm’s product line to include light and heavy armament, as well as the first mass-produced steel aircraft wings.”
Good timing, commented Jonathan. Half the world was about to need as many gun barrels as they could get their hands on. It was a success story that had been repeated countless times during the bloody twentieth century. So far, things were on track for a repeat performance in the twenty-first.

He turned to the back of the brochure and perused the accounts. Revenues: 55 million. Profit: 6 million. Employees: 478. The numbers had a weight to them that the words couldn’t match. Money was real. It was substantial. Money did not lie.

The more Jonathan read, the angrier he became. There was no doubting that ZIAG was a legitimate firm. So how was it that a woman who did not exist had come to be an employee?

It was then that he heard the tapping on his window. Something hard.

He jumped in his seat and turned toward the noise.

All he needed
was a towel. The Ghost hadn’t counted on the darkness being so complete. The flames from a silencer would be visible ten cars back. He dug around in his overnight bag and came up with a black T-shirt. He tore off a strip of fabric and wrapped it around the silencer. His last act before leaving the car was to attach the twill bag that would catch his spent shells.

The Ghost opened the door with care, leaving it ajar for his return. Precious little space separated the car and the safety railing. Keeping low, he slid alongside the chassis. The air inside the tunnel was clammy and frigid. The pocked stone wall rushed past, barely an arm’s length away. He spotted Ransom’s car, three back. The interior lights of the vehicles in between were extinguished, the drivers most probably resting. Ransom’s dome light, however, was illuminated. He sat reading some papers, lit as if he were on a stage.

Keeping to a crouch, the Ghost moved toward him. He passed one car, then another. He stopped to check his watch. It was nine minutes since the train had entered the tunnel. The clerk at the ticket window had informed him that transit time was fifteen minutes end to end. His eyes focused on Ransom. The interior cabin light posed a problem. He didn’t want anyone to see Ransom’s body before they reached Kandersteg. Cell phones operated in the tunnel. It wasn’t beyond reason that someone might call the police.

He settled back on his haunches.

A minute passed. Then another. Finally, he moved.

Sliding from the rear of the car, he crossed from one flatbed to the next. The Mercedes was parked at the head of its carriage. There were no railings here, and the Ghost had to be careful not to put a foot over the side. He took another step forward, putting his hand out to touch the Mercedes’ fender. He drew up to the driver’s door. Thumbing the safety to the off position, he stood and tapped the pistol against the window.

Jonathan Ransom looked directly at him.

The Ghost pulled the trigger.

Jonathan stared out the window.
Something was there. A shadow. A form. He looked more closely. His eyes widened. A gun was pointed at his forehead.

Suddenly, a flame erupted, blinding him.

He flinched, turning his head away. There was the sound of crunching sand. Again, the same noise. He looked back as a spit of fire smeared the glass. The window bulged inward. He saw the starlike fractures where bullets had struck the glass but hadn’t passed through.

The glass was bulletproof.

He had no time to react. Just then, the car door opened and an arm pushed through the gap. All Jonathan saw was the pistol aimed at his cheek. Instinctively, he threw his head back and grabbed the wrist, forcing it up and away from his face before it spat something that tore into the roof. He grasped the wrist with both hands and wrenched it downward. He glanced toward the door and caught a glimpse of a face. Hooded eyes. An expression of cold concentration.

At that moment, the train passed into the wider section of the tunnel. The wall to his right disappeared and he had the impression of gazing into a subterranean cavern. Directly ahead, he saw a flickering light. The station at Kandersteg.

The killer yanked his arm free. Jonathan pulled the door closed and locked it. The shadow melted into the dark. Jonathan started the engine. But where to go? He couldn’t go forward or backward, and he couldn’t sit there waiting to be shot. He rammed a palm into the horn, then turned on the lights and hit the brights. The Xenon beams illuminated the cars in front of him with a diamond blue light. He noted for the first time that the safety railing didn’t extend between the railway cars. A sturdy chain two meters in length spanned the gap.

Just then, the train emerged from the tunnel. The tracks veered left, slotting beside the loading platform. Throwing the car into drive, he turned the wheel and pressed his foot on the accelerator. The Mercedes’ V-12 engine propelled the car forward, snapping the safety chain and carrying him onto the platform. Sleet spattered the windshield. He fumbled for the wipers as he pressed his face nearer the glass. Something squat and dark loomed in front of him. Finally, he found the proper control and the blades cleared the windscreen. A kiosk stood only ten meters ahead. Jonathan jerked the wheel and the car dodged the obstacle with only inches to spare.

He continued down the loading ramp and across the parking lot, coming to a stop at the red light that governed access to the highway. Behind him, the train was pulling to a halt, its iron wheels screeching and moaning. No cars had begun to disembark.

The traffic light turned green.

Jonathan turned onto the highway and drove at the speed limit for ten minutes before taking the nearest exit and guiding the car down a series of narrower roads that led as far from the highway as possible. Content that he hadn’t been followed, he pulled the car to the side of the road and killed the engine. He met his eyes in the rearview mirror. They were the eyes of a fugitive. His breath came in shallow gulps that left him light-headed and just this side of nauseous.

It wasn’t the first time that he’d been shot at. He’d come under gunfire in a general, “duck, you sucker” way. Working in a field hospital in Liberia, he’d found himself in a no-man’s-land caught between two warring factions. He was operating when the firing began. It was an amputation, a machete wound gone gangrenous. Even now, after seven years, he could see himself holding the saw as bullets suddenly began to tear into the whitewashed cement walls. Outside, there came the usual cries and whimpers. He remembered one man’s voice in particular calling out,
“Cachez-vous vite. Ils vont nous tous tuer.” Hide quickly. They’re going to kill us all.
But no one in the operating room budged. Not even after a round exploded an IV drip.

Turning, he stared at the driver’s side window. There was no spidering. No fractures. Just three star-shaped scratches in the glass. He ran his fingers over the surface. Not even an indentation. Amazing, he thought, wondering how a piece of glass could fend off a bullet fired at point-blank range. He figured that it wasn’t glass at all, but some kind of plastic. Whatever it was, he liked it. He liked it a helluva lot. He poked his finger into the rent in the ceiling fabric, seeking out the bullet, but found nothing.

He sat back in the seat, burdened by his predicament. Somewhere back there he’d crossed a line. He wasn’t sure whether it had been when he’d run from the police in Landquart or when he’d decided to track down Gottfried Blitz. It didn’t matter. He was no longer looking in, the grieving spouse seeking closure about his wife’s double life.
Her clandestine activities.
He was a part of it now, whatever
it
was.

Braving the rain, he got out of the car and examined the Mercedes for damage. The front fender was scraped and dented on the right underside, but otherwise the car was fine.

A tank,
he thought with a burst of misplaced pride.

He hurried back inside and cranked up the heat. He wondered about the man who’d tried to kill him. He was certain that it was the same man who’d killed Blitz. He must have been following Jonathan all day, biding his time, waiting for the right moment. But why had he waited so long? There had been plenty of moments, both on the mountain and in the city, when Jonathan had been vulnerable. He didn’t have an answer.

One thing was for sure: the killer must have been surprised about the armored car.

That’s right, buddy. A fuckin’ tank!

Jonathan touched his neck, feeling the Saint Christopher that lay against his skin. Patron saint of travelers. He had a desire to kiss the medal. The smile wilted after a few seconds, forced aside by a creeping sense of dread. He didn’t believe for a second that the killer was going to cut and run. He was back there somewhere, and he was coming, just like the relentless one-armed man in the old ghost stories.

Jonathan put the car in drive. Making a three-point turn, he headed back along the side roads until he reached the highway. He pointed the car north in the direction of Bern. Other automobiles passed him regularly. His eyes checked the rearview mirror frequently, but he saw nothing that caused him concern.