The Solomon Effect (17 page)

Yasnaya Polyana, Russia: Wednesday 28 October
11:10
A.M.
local time

The farmhouse lay on the edge of a desolate glen, just beyond
the outskirts of Yasnaya Polyana. Sturdily built of red brick and stout timbers by some long-vanished German, it now boasted a statue of Lenin that stood surrounded by flowerbeds like a Kaliningrad version of a garden gnome, thought Rodriguez. As he watched, a cold wind ruffled the surface of the nearby duck pond and rattled the yellowing leaves of the elms that sheltered an old black-and-white cow.

They’d pulled off into a rutted track surrounded by a tangled growth of birch and oak in what might once have been a field, sixty years ago. Leaning against the trunk of a gnarled oak, he swept his field glasses across the farmyard to the ancient barn and henhouse, and then back. Stefan Baklanov’s mother was on the porch, a big basin clamped between her knees as she shelled a mound of peas with quick, practiced movements.

Salinger said, “Looks like she’s alone. We can take over the place in a minute. She’ll never know what hit her.”

“No. This kid knows we’re after him. We don’t do anything that might spook him. We leave the place alone and wait. Let him come to us.”

Salinger watched, his eyes narrowing, as an old Lada crept down the nearby narrow road to disappear around a bend. “When’s Borz supposed to get here?”

“Tonight.”

Rodriguez watched the woman below stand up and stretch, the basin of peas balanced on one hip. She was built long and bony, with dark hair just beginning to go gray and a face lined by worry and hard work. She walked into the house, the door banging behind her. He said, “I want a tap put on her phone. Can you do that?”

“Easy.”

The woman reemerged. They watched her walk down the steps, a bucket in one hand.

“Think the kid’ll be stupid enough to call her?”

“He’ll call, or he’ll come. One way or the other, we nail him.”

Freiburg, Germany: Wednesday 28 October
10:35
A.M.
local time

They unwrapped Herr Herbolt’s package in a shadowy, out-of-the-way pew of the
münster.

“God bless Matt,” said Jax, quickly clipping the holstered Beretta inside the waistband of his chinos.

“Somehow it doesn’t seem right to be fawning over guns in a church,” whispered Tobie, eyeing the compact Beretta 9000 Matt had sent for her.

“I like guns a lot better than funerals—especially my own.” He picked up the small Beretta and held it out to her.

She made no move to take it. “You’ve seen my marksmanship records, right?”

He grinned and dropped the gun into her shoulder bag. “What marksmanship records? The military loves to hand out marksmanship medals. You’re the only person I’ve ever heard of who didn’t manage to score some kind of marksmanship commendation.”

“There are a few of us.” She slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and stared up at the brilliant jewel-toned stained-glass window beside them. “So how do we get to Altenwhatever?”

“Altenbruch. We take an InterCity Express train to Bremen, and then rent a car.”

She turned to look at him. “I didn’t think Jason Aldrich could rent a car anyplace that has computers.”

“He can’t. Which is why you’re renting the car.”

“Me?”
A nearby group of tourists turned to frown at them. She realized she was shouting, and dropped her voice again. “On my own credit card?”

He pushed to his feet. “I’ll make sure the Company reimburses you.”

“And if we run into a bunch of bad guys and wreck it?”

“We won’t.”

“Right.”

She followed him down the nave and out into the weak autumn sunshine. “There’s no other way to do this?”

“Nope.”

She thought about it a minute, then sighed. “Okay. But I drive.”

“Fine. You drive.”

“I mean it. I drive.”

He laughed. “I get it. You drive. As long as you drive better than you shoot,” he added, then ducked when she swung her bag at his head.

St. Martin, Caribbean: Wednesday 28 October
9:00
A.M.
local time

One of James Walker’s favorite toys was a gleaming one-hundred-and-ten-foot fiberglass Hargrave with a raised pilothouse. It was Catherine who’d christened the yacht the
Harlequin.
She’d wanted to keep it in the divorce, too, but all he’d had to do was whisper those magic words, “joint custody,” and she’d backed off in a hurry.

Carrying an aluminum case containing a carefully padded secret, Walker climbed aboard the
Harlequin
just after breakfast and nodded to his captain. “Ready to sail?”

“Yes, sir.”

Walker turned toward his stateroom. “Then let’s do it.”

Washington, D.C.

Boyd’s second day of testimony before Congress received a standing ovation. It was all bullshit, of course. But Boyd had learned early in his career that officers who told politicians what they wanted to hear got promoted; the fools who told the truth found other jobs.

He was smiling and shaking hands with the members of the Senate when Colonel Sam Lee leaned in close and whispered, “We need to talk.”

Boyd paused to acknowledge the congratulations of some grinning idiot who said, “You’ve convinced me, General. If the President can get this appropriation bill to the floor, it’s got my vote.”

“Why thank you, Senator. It’s good to know the military can count on your support.” Boyd clapped the Senator on the shoulder, then added quietly to Lee, “The coffee shop around the corner. Wait for me.”

Half an hour later, he found Lee sipping a cappuccino in a booth near the back of the shop, a half eaten muffin abandoned on the plate before him. Boyd ordered good old-fashioned coffee, black, then slid into the booth. “What have you got?”

“It’s about Ensign Guinness, sir.”

Boyd took a sip of his coffee, grimacing as the bitter, hot liquid slid down his throat. “What about her?”

“She was given her commission at the direction of Vice President Beckham himself.”

“Beckham?
What’s that left-leaning son of a bitch got to do with anything?”

“She saved his life.”

Boyd frowned. “Are we talking about that incident last summer?”

“Yes, sir.” Lee leaned forward. “But this is where it gets interesting: she was recalled to active duty after getting a psycho discharge over some incident in Iraq.”

“So what’s she doing in the CIA?”

Lee dropped his voice even lower. “Remote viewing, sir.”

“What?” Boyd made a rude noise. “I think someone’s jerking your strings, Colonel. The Government got out of the hocus-pocus business more than ten years ago.”

“Yes, sir. But this isn’t a formal program; it’s a small project Beckham is running through Division Thirteen.” The Colonel paused. “She’s supposed to be very good at it, sir.”

Boyd threw back his head, his laughter coming loud and long. “You don’t really believe in that bullshit, do you?”

“I managed to access her viewing report.”

Boyd wasn’t laughing anymore. “And?”

Lee drew a folded sheaf of papers from his pocket and slid it across the table. “I printed it out, sir. I think you’d better look at it.”

Boyd hesitated a moment, then reached to close his fingers around the report. “Where are they now?”

The tic beside Lee’s eye was back, worse than ever. “Germany, sir.”

Altenbruch, Germany: Wednesday 28 October
6:00
P.M.
local time

The
U-Boot Archiv
lay on a narrow street not far from the
deep blue waters of the North Sea. By the time Tobie parked her rented red Jetta outside the small, steeply gabled yellow archives building, the sun had already slipped low enough in the sky to throw long shadows across the pavement.

The archives had officially closed hours before. But at their approach, a wizened face appeared at one of the windows. A moment later they heard the lock on the front door turn.

“Velcome,” said the ancient, white-haired wisp of a woman who opened the door for them. Neatly dressed in a white blouse with a round collar, a spruce green cardigan, and a plaid wool skirt, she stood about five feet high and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. In age, she might have been anywhere between eighty and a hundred. “I am Marie Oldenburg. I’ve been vaiting for you. Please, come in.”

She led them to a small office crowded with shelves and filing cabinets, all neatly ordered and gleaming with fastidious clean
liness. “Herr Herbolt tells us you are interested in U–114.”

“You know something about it?” asked Tobie, taking one of the seats the woman indicated.

“Yes, and no.” She sat behind a lovingly polished old desk, her gnarled hands folded before her. “I have been vorking in the archives for twenty years now, ever since Herr Bredow turned what vas once his private collection into a foundation. My husband, Hans, was a submariner, you see. He vas on U-648 when it disappeared on a mission in 1943. Ve haven’t yet discovered what happened to U–648. But ve have solved many riddles. Many riddles.”

Jax glanced at Tobie, but said nothing.

Marie Oldenburg cleared her throat. “You know that the numbers U-112 to U-115 vere to be assigned to four type XI-B vessels whose keels vere originally laid down before the war, but that there are no Kriegsmarine records of the submarines ever being finished or commissioned?”

“We heard there are no official records,” said Jax.

She nodded. “Germany had over a thousand U-boats in World War II. Ve have records here on nearly all of them. Some of our collections are so extensive that it is possible to trace the entire history of a submarine, from the laying of its keel to the day of its loss. Up until six months ago, I vould have told you no XI-B class boats ever existed.”

“So what happened six months ago?”

“A man named Karl Wertheim came to see us. I spoke to him myself. It seems his grandfather had vorked at the docks at Bremerhaven. After his death, the young Wertheim found a number of papers and other memorabilia in a trunk in his grandfather’s attic that he thought ve might be interested in purchasing. Amongst those papers vas the manifest of a U-114, dated March 1945.” She hesitated. “Or so he claimed.”

“The archives didn’t buy the papers?”

She spread her hands wide. “This is a nonprofit venture. Ev
erything you see here and in the museum has been donated. I tried to convince the young man to contribute his grandfather’s papers to the archives, but he refused. He vouldn’t even let me copy them—he said it vould reduce their sale value.”

“But you saw them?”

“Some of them. Not, unfortunately, the manifest of U-114. The young man vas very secretive about it. He claimed that amongst its other cargo, U-114 carried a secret veapon—what you Americans like to call a veapon of mass destruction.”

Tobie felt a tingle of fear run up her spine. “You mean an atom bomb? Is that possible?”

Marie Oldenburg laced her fingers together on the desktop before her. “There is much debate concerning how far the German atomic program had actually progressed at the time of the surrender.” She paused. “Are you familiar with the vork of Wolfgang Palmer?”

Tobie glanced at Jax, but he shook his head. “I’m sorry, no.”

“Herr Palmer is a journalist. He has spent years researching the German atomic program, and he tells me it is indeed possible that the Nazi government tried to send an atomic bomb to Japan—or at least the material to make such a bomb. But at the moment, ve have only young Wertheim’s vord that the XI-B even existed. Whereas for its cargo…” She let her voice trail away.

Jax said, “Where can we find this Karl Wertheim?”

Marie Oldenburg sighed. “Unfortunately, he is dead. Two of our members—both former submarine officers themselves—vent to see the young man, hoping to persuade him to donate the items in his grandfather’s name. But he told them he’d already listed them on eBay and had located an interested buyer. Two days later, his house caught fire and Karl Wertheim was found dead.”

“He died in the fire?”

“No. Someone had slit his throat.”

Kaliningrad Oblast: Wednesday 28 October
8:00
P.M.
local time

The closer Stefan drew to Yasnaya Polyana, the more skittish
he became. He had slept most of the afternoon, snuggled up next to the black-and-tan pup for warmth, emerging only at dusk to walk along the edge of the fallow, frost-covered fields.

They kept well back from the pavement and the occasional darting beams of passing headlights, but he’d given up trying to go overland. Once, he’d blundered into a patch of stinging nettles; another time, the pup strayed into a bog and got stuck. Plus they kept getting lost, going off in the wrong direction or unwittingly circling around on themselves. He’d finally decided to stick close to the main roads and travel only at night. He and the pup were both footsore and hungry and desperate to get home.

The problem was, it had occurred to him that going home might not be safe.

With a whine, the dog flopped down on the grassy verge,
his tongue hanging out as he panted heavily. Stefan dropped beside him. “What’s the matter, boy? Tired?”

He lay back, his eyes blinking as he stared up at the dark sky. The night was cold and overcast, allowing only faint glimmers of starlight to peek through. Stefan felt a lump rise in his throat, and resolutely squeezed his eyes shut against an upwelling of tears.

Sleep came by stealth. He awoke with a start, shivering, unsure at first what had roused him. He heard a snort and a jingle of harness, and raised his head to find a decrepit farm wagon pulled by a pair of graying mules drawn up beside the verge.

A hunched figure wearing a woolen cap perched on a hard wooden seat high above the wagon’s great iron-banded wheels. “You all right, boy?”

Stefan scrambled to his feet, ready to run. “How’d you know I was here?”

The man laughed. “I saw you. What’d you think? I may be old, but there’s never been anything wrong with my eyes. I bet I can see better at night than you.”

Stefan wiped the back of his fist across his nose. “You must have eyes like an owl.”

The man laughed again. “How’d you like a ride?”

Stefan dropped his hand to the pup’s head. “And my dog?”

“The dog’s welcome, too.”

He lifted the pup up onto the floor of the wagon, then swung himself up using an old iron step. The farmer made a clucking sound and danced the reins on the backs of the mules. Stefan breathed in the pungent, earthy smell of potatoes, and sneezed.

The old man laughed. “Where you headed?”

“Chkalovo,” said Stefan, naming a hamlet just beyond Yasnaya Polyana.

“You can go back to sleep, if you want. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Stefan shook his head.

“What’s your dog’s name?”

“He doesn’t have one.”

“Everyone should have a name. Man or beast.”

“So what’re your mules’ names?”

“Karl and Marx.”

Stefan laughed so hard he had to grab the side of the wagon seat to keep from falling off.

The old man shrugged. “They’re old mules.”

They talked for a time about mules and farming and the price of grain. They were easing down a dark wooded slope when they came around a bend and saw the glow of flares. Against the dancing flames of a fire stood two silhouettes in uniform.

The dog sat up and gave a low growl. Stefan put a warning hand on its head.
“Ssshh,
boy. What’s that?”

“Looks like the militia’ve set up a roadblock. I went through another checkpoint just like this one, maybe ten miles back. They were looking for a young man. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

Stefan curled his hand over the edge of the seat, ready to jump. The old man said softly, “You jump now, they’ll see you.”

Stefan drew in a quick breath, trying to ease the sudden pain in his side, but it didn’t help. “What do I do?”

The old man pursed his lips. “Get in back. You’ll find some empty gunnysacks beneath the seat you can pull up over you.”

“And if they search the load?”

The old man was silent for a moment. “Then I’ll take care of your dog.”