The Rendition (29 page)

As we drove, she said, “Something else, Alex. I've gotten rid of everything that you brought back from the Vogt woman's place. Whatever was worth keeping I have with me.”

The autobahn heading south is a heavily traveled highway that leads toward Salzburg, and twenty miles south of Munich I turned onto a secondary highway that would take us straight into Holzkirchen.

“What do you think happened?” Sylvia asked. “How did he get out?”

“No idea.” There were still a number of things that could go wrong, and I was worried that the cops would be watching all the S-Bahn lines closely. Any male traveling alone would attract their attention. It now occurred to me that I should have suggested a stop closer to Munich, but there are seven or eight different lines, and Holzkirchen was the only stop that I recalled on the S-3. The longer Brinkman was in the train, the more chance there was that he could be nailed.

I'd begun to sweat and I was conscious of clutching the steering wheel as I drove.

When we reached Holzkirchen, I drove through the narrow streets and without any difficulty found the Oberland. It was a medium-sized hotel and restaurant, a landmark not far from the railroad station that
would be easy for Brinkman to find. I parked the car on the street some fifty yards beyond the hotel. When Brinkman showed, we'd spot him without any difficulty.

The problem was, he didn't show. Two trains came and went. People got off and came walking out of the station, but none of them was Brinkman. When I checked my watch, I saw that well over an hour had elapsed since he'd made the call.

“What now?” Sylvia asked after the second train left the station. “Shouldn't he have been on one of those?” When I only nodded, Sylvia said, “What now, Alex?”

I was about to say the cops could have grabbed him on the train, but there was no sense tossing in the towel—not when we'd come this far.

I said, “We wait.”

Sitting in the car parked in the narrow street, we waited another twenty minutes. Beads of perspiration kept forming on my forehead. Sylvia's breathing became so labored it began to sound like gasping. I was ready to announce that it was pointless to wait any longer.

Then, in the rearview mirror, I spotted a distant figure riding uncertainly up the narrow street on a bicycle. When he reached the intersection, he stopped pedaling and looked around. He seemed to be out of breath.

The cycler caught my attention because of what he was wearing—a gray sports jacket, a jacket the same color as the one Sylvia and I had bought for Brinkman—and he had on a white shirt, blue tie, and dark-gray pants. He was dressed like Brinkman. When he started riding again and got closer, I made out his face—Doug Brinkman! I jumped out of the car and waved my arms. He saw me and started riding toward us. When he pulled up alongside, we exchanged silent high fives, and I tossed the bike into the trunk of the car.

As Brinkman climbed in, he and Sylvia exchanged glances, and if I had any doubts about them being lovers, they disappeared at that moment. I got the engine going and eased the vehicle into traffic.

“I can't believe I made it,” Brinkman said. He was breathing heavily, obviously out of breath from riding fast.

“What in the world happened?” Sylvia asked, her voice a combination of panic and relief.

“What could go wrong, did go wrong,” Brinkman said. “Were you guys worried?”

“Of course not,” I said. “A Green Beret can do anything. Isn't that what they used to tell us at Fort Bragg?”

“Yeah, but who believed that stuff?”

Five minutes later, I pulled off the highway into a small rest area just south of the city. While we sat there, Brinkman told us the story.

“The reason I didn't make it down to the entrance was I got lost. I went the wrong way when I left the washroom and couldn't find the fire stairs. So I just decided to keep moving. A couple of women unlocked a door, and I just followed them down a flight of stairs and I ended up in the employees' canteen. I saw people leaving, but I could see they were all showing ID to some cops at the door. Then I saw a fella with a container of coffee knock on a door on the other end and someone on the other side of the door opened it. I grabbed a half-empty container off one of the tables and did what he did. When someone on the other side unlocked the door, I was in a room with a lot of chairs and a lot of people with pads and pencils standing around. A couple of cops were on a podium gathering up papers and talking.”

When Sylvia looked at me, I said, “The briefing room for members of the press. It's on the first floor, next to the canteen.”

“Nobody expected me to turn up there,” Brinkman said.

“What did you do?” Sylvia asked.

“Some kind of meeting was breaking up and as the people started drifting out, I drifted out with them. An exit was right there. A couple of cops showed up and started checking people, but I just walked by as if I was too important to show ID.”

I took a quick glance at Sylvia. I'd been skeptical, but by picking out the right clothes for Brinkman, she might very well have averted disaster. No wonder the secretary of defense had confidence in her.

Brinkman said, “I don't think they expected an escaped prisoner to be in that group. I went right by them and found myself in a street next to a museum.”

I nodded. “The hunter's museum. The rear door of the police building exits on the Augustinerstrasse. You weren't far from Marienplatz.”

“I saw that, so I went down into the S-Bahn.” The S-Bahn is the subway, Munich's answer to the London Underground and the Paris Metro.

I said, “You called us from the East Railroad Station.”

Brinkman nodded. “I was on the platform. But the next train I took only went a couple of stations when it stopped—I forget the name, began with a U.”

“Unterhaching?”

“I think so. Anyway, I waited a minute, then took a look around. The conductor was talking to the train operator, and I figured they expected to be there a while. I didn't like that. I thought the local cops might show up and start looking through the train.”

“What then?” Sylvia asked.

“I might have been right. As I left the station, four cops came marching up the steps. I stayed behind a concrete pillar, then exited the station. My problem then was getting down here. My first thought was to take a taxi, but a driver could have asked questions and maybe caused problems. I went by a bicycle shop. Since I found five hundred euros in the pocket of the jacket I decided I'd buy a bicycle. The owner was real friendly. I guess he was happy to sell a bike.”

Looking at me, Brinkman said, “I still can't believe it worked. Someone deserves a lot of credit for pulling this off.”

“It's what we get paid for,” Sylvia said coolly. “I spoke with Harry Owen a few minutes ago on the phone. He said he kept asking the guards for directions, playing the role of the dumb American. He was able to keep them busy, and that bought us a few extra minutes.”

I didn't say anything. The truth was, we weren't anywhere near out of the woods yet. We were in a car parked just off the road twenty-five miles south of Munich. We still needed to get Brinkman out of the country. I assumed Sylvia knew how to take care of that end of things.

Looking at me, she said, “You and I still have things to talk over.” Still wearing his suit and tie, Brinkman looked more like a lawyer than
an escaped prisoner, and I figured it was safe to leave him in the parked car for a few minutes. Sylvia told him to wait while she and I took a short stroll.

As we walked along the highway, Sylvia said, “The police might try to connect you to Doug's escape. Have your story ready.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I shrugged. “Whatever they think, they can't prove anything.”

I was wondering when we could wind up this operation. Although Sedfrit was the primary suspect in Quemal's murder, it was still possible that the cops might determine he was innocent. If that happened, they'd look for another suspect—and that very well could be me. I wanted to be out of Munich before that happened.

I said, “Have you talked with D.C.?”

“Of course. I had approval for this operation, if that's what you're wondering. We have to keep Doug under wraps—”

“Major Brinkman, you mean.”

Sylvia colored. After a second, she said, “While they're working out the details for getting Major Brinkman out of the country, he stays with me. People won't breathe easy until they know he's on a plane back to the States.”

“How long do you figure?”

“Two days, maybe three. There'll be some red tape. There always is. I'll be back as soon as I can make it. If the police call you down, don't volunteer anything.”

I wondered where Sylvia was headed—probably to another safe house somewhere, and then to one of our military installations. Her people in D.C. would have indicated where she and Brinkman could hole up. I assumed that she and Doug might use this opportunity to renew old acquaintances. After Brinkman had shaken himself loose from Ursula Vogt, Sylvia showed up in Afghanistan, and they'd almost certainly become lovers out there.

I wasn't jealous. The only woman I ever thought about was Irmie. And I thought about her day and night.

“Something else, Alex. See what you can find out about Nadaj.”

I wondered how I was supposed to manage that.

We'd walked in a circle, and now we were back at the car where Brinkman was waiting. The only other car in the rest area contained a married couple and two small children, who were eating sandwiches. It was a miracle, but so far, the cops hadn't caught up with us. I gave her the keys and Sylvia climbed in behind the wheel.

“I'll be with Doug for a couple of days. Remember, Nadaj is still a high-value target.”

“It might be easier for me if I knew why we're so interested in Nadaj.” Sylvia was silent for a moment, probably figuring just how much I needed to know. In this business the rule is ironclad. You don't tell anyone anything. But we both knew I needed more of a sense of what was going on.

After a second, Sylvia nodded at Brinkman. “Tell us how you met Ursula.”

Leaning forward from the back seat, Brinkman began to talk. “It was in Mazar-e-Sharif, maybe six months into my first tour. We were getting ready to move into the Shahikot Valley.”

Sylvia said, “I was out there. It's just a small town, but there was a walled-in compound on the outskirts. Our people set up a prison there.”

I was familiar with Mazar-e-Sharif, where the CIA lost an interrogator during the first days of the war. Looking at Brinkman, I said, “You were with the Fifth Group?” I was referring to the Special Forces Group then active in Afghanistan.

Brinkman nodded. “Headquarters Detachment, Third Battalion. We were reconnoitering, trying to figure the best way into the mountains when we got a radio alert. Something was going down back in Mazar-e-Sharif, at the prison. So I rounded up as many guys as I could, and we headed up there.”

“Tell him what you found,” Sylvia said.

“It was bad,” Brinkman said. “Our people had taken over five hundred al-Qaeda prisoners, but we had only a dozen guys guarding them. They'd begun to riot, and they'd managed to bang a big hole in one of
the walls. Just as we arrived, the prisoners started pouring through. The guards had taken cover, but they wouldn't have had a chance against those numbers.”

“How'd you manage it?” I asked.

“I was driving a Toyota pickup. Drove it right up against the wall where the break was, climbed out. I know a little Pashto. I started shouting,
Wadarega yaa dee wulim!
Halt or we'll shoot! We stuck our weapons right in front of these guys' noses. I don't know how good my pronunciation was.
Zaman da amruno paerawi wukra!
Follow our orders or get shot!”

Looking at me, Sylvia said, “They got the message.”

“I let go a couple of bursts right over their heads,” Brinkman said. “That helped. They started backing off. When they saw how the rounds chewed up the wall, they began to quiet down.”

“Doug makes it sound easy,” Sylvia said. “He risked his life doing that.”

Brinkman shrugged. “It took a while, but we were finally able to herd them all back inside.”

“He was awarded the DSC,” Sylvia said quietly.

“Right after we got things settled down, we called for reinforcements. It was around that time that Ursula Vogt showed up. She identified herself as a correspondent for a Kraut newspaper. Said she wanted to talk with me about what happened. I gave her the whole story right from the beginning.” He paused, looked at Sylvia. “After that, one thing led to another.”

“She began chasing you around,” Sylvia said.

“I should have known better, should have known it was too good to be true, having this good-looking dame showing up all the time. When I was back in Kabul, she turned up there, and we got to know one another a little better. Then she went back home. That was January 2004.”

Brinkman looked at Sylvia as though getting permission to tell the rest of the story.

“Anyway, I was reassigned to Bragg, but Ursula and I stayed in
contact, mostly through e-mail. A year later, our outfit deployed again. Then Ursula showed up again.”

“Only now she was with
Welt-Bericht
,” Sylvia said. “Working for Kurt Mehling. And she started taping all your conversations.”

Brinkman grimaced. “She called them interviews.”

I recalled the X-rated tapes Sylvia had played for my benefit at the apartment. Brinkman and Ursula Vogt had seen quite a bit of one another.

Sylvia said, “What she was looking for was admissions that we'd violated the Geneva Convention.”

“Hell, what she was looking for was admissions that we'd used sarin gas up in the mountains.”

I perked up when I heard that. Sarin is a particularly deadly nerve gas. I knew there had been some talk of Saddam Hussein possessing sarin—and that he'd used it to put down a rebellion of his own people in the years following the First Gulf War.