The Visitor (13 page)

CHAPTER 10

Ralls returned to the farm by car, but it cost another day. He and his Polish interpreter, Klara, a blonde woman of forty-five, headed for the farmhouse on the property where the GPS showed the landing spot.

They drove into the farm and up to the farmhouse that they had seen from the helicopter. An elderly man came out, and greetings were exchanged in Polish.

“Did you see any strange aircraft landing in your farm several days ago?” Klara asked.

The retired farmer looked at them like they were crazy. “Strange aircraft? What are you talking about? This is a farm, not an airport.”

Ralls showed him the drawing of the pilot. He had brought a colored drawing of the pilot, as made by a sketch artist from the description of Captain Duncan, the F-22 pilot, since the person of interest had red hair, which was perhaps her most distinguishing feature from what little the F-22 pilot had been able to observe.

The farmer looked intently at the drawing for a while, holding it at a distance. It was obvious that his vision was not very good and he needed glasses.

Then he hesitated, as though to avoid making a mistake. “I’m retired, and others now work this farm. I meet with my retired friend early one day a week for coffee to discuss things. We were meeting here when a young woman walked up, asking for a ride to town. She had red hair, but I cannot say if that was her or not.”

“What direction did she come from?”

He pointed out to the farm. “That way. She was on foot coming across the field. I think she was one of those nature lovers on a spring hike somewhere.”

“Did she say where she had come from?” Ralls asked.

He thought a while. “No. She wanted a ride to town but we told her that we could not give her one. She left down the road toward the highway.”

“Was there anything unusual about her?”

“No. But, she did not have one of those huge back packs like the hikers usually have. She only had a small shoulder bag. She was very pretty and had red hair.”

Ralls and Klara thanked the old man and headed down the road.

“The first congregation of people on the road will be the salt mine, a tourist attraction,” Klara said. “I think we should try there.”

There were tourist buses with groups getting on and off. People milled about, going down the mine, in and out of the gift shop, and to the bathrooms.

Klara and Ralls went into the gift shop to see if anyone knew anything.

A Polish sales lady of fifty years approached them. Ralls thought she might speak English since she was there for the tourist trade. She did.

“Hello. I’m looking for a young lady with red hair.” He showed her the drawing. “Have you seen anyone recently resembling her?”

She looked carefully at the drawing. “There are many tourists that come here. But I do recall a few days ago a young lady with red hair accompanying a man into a very fancy car, a big white one. The car was one of those older, classics. It drew quite a bit of attention.”

“Do you know which way they went?”

“No, but Krakow is near. They most likely went there, as that is where most tourists come from to visit the salt mine here.”

Ralls and Klara headed for Krakow. As there was no one else to discuss the search with, Ralls discussed the possibilities with the interpreter en route. “What do you think?”

“There are a lot of pretty girls here that will escort for cheap,” she said. “If she came in some rocket, where is it? We should look further into just who is this person with the fancy car.”

“It’s the only lead we have, so let’s check it out,” Ralls said. “If the man she caught a ride with is rich, where in Krakow would he likely take her?”

“Oh, that’s easy. The best hotel is the Forum on the Vistula River.”

At the reception of the Forum, Ralls, with Klara next to him in case translation was needed, asked the lady clerk, who spoke limited English, “We are looking for a man in a classic car, a big white one, and he may have been accompanied by a red-haired young lady.”

As she was well trained, she did not respond, but instead went for the manager. A man dressed in formal black clothes approached and asked, “How may I help you, sir?”

“I’m from the United States Government. This is my official interpreter and assistant.” He had just elevated her to assistant. He produced an identification card with his picture on it with a US seal, along with a badge. “We’re looking for a man with a young lady with red hair who may have checked in here recently. They would have been in a huge, white, classic car.”

The manager could care less what governmental agency wanted to probe into hotel business and interfere with his high-stepping guests who took the expensive suites and depended on anonymity. “I’m so sorry, sir. We are known for discretion with our guests, and even if I did remember them, I would not be able to say if such a person was or was not a guest here.”

Ralls realized that he would get nowhere by the front door approach. He decided to get rooms and see what could be learned from hotel staff or other guests. “Very well, thank you. How much are two regular rooms?”

“We have two regular rooms,” the manager said. “River facing, or city facing? Those facing the river are at a higher rate than those on the other side.” He gave them the rates.

Ralls, shocked at the prices, and remembering his limitations on expenditures for travel and hotels away from home, asked, “The US Government requires travel away from home to meet a per diem limit set by the Internal Revenue Service for federal employees, which is the same that is allowed for deductions for taxpayers. Do you give a discount for government employees?”

***

Once settled in what Ralls considered as outrageously expensive rooms, he sent Klara out into the hotel to find out who might talk.

She returned an hour and a half later. “No luck with the maids or the porters. There are a number of rich or important people that stay here, and I either could not get anyone that remembered or perhaps they were too well trained to speak, for fear of losing their jobs. However, the bartender, when I told him I was a classic car buff and asked if he had seen any classic cars recently, he said that there was a beautiful, classic, white Rolls Royce belonging to a rich guest at the hotel recently. He recalled that he was an aristocrat. That’s all I could get from him.”

“That could be our man,” Ralls said. “I have an idea. Maybe he went into town to eat, and the staff there would not be under instructions not to speak about customers. Why don’t you go back to the concierge and find out where the best restaurants in town are? We can then go to into town this evening and ask.”

The hotel recommended a short list of the best places in town for dinner. That evening, Ralls and Klara began to hit them, one after the other, until they found one that announced that they had a special guest called Baron Von Limbach who had arrived in a classic Rolls Royce car with a beautiful young lady.

“We have his name,” Ralls said to Klara. “Now I can check on him.”

Back at the hotel, Ralls phoned in to Washington, where it was morning, on his military, secure satellite phone. “Good morning, Director. Ralls here from Krakow, Poland.”

“Any news?”

“I circled the exact landing spot and surrounding area many times in a chopper, but there were no clues. The exact landing spot was in the middle of a pasture--there has been rain since, which might have made the grass rise up from landing gear impressions. There was no landing strip, no hanger, and no tracks from trucks to collect any such craft.”

“What? That seems impossible! She must’ve had a way to get the craft out of the area.”

“The only clue at all is that, on the morning following the landing, a red-haired female appeared at a farmhouse not far away. At the farmhouse we met a farmer who said that a young lady with red hair came to his house early in the morning after the landing, on foot, and wanted a lift into town. He thought she was one of those back-packers, but she did not have a back pack, only a satchel, which means she was most likely not camping out. When she could not get a ride, she left on foot, walking toward the highway. I assumed there was no one waiting for her at the landing site so I went to the nearest congregation of people, which is an old salt mine turned into a tourist attraction. A young lady with red hair was seen leaving with an older man in a classic, white, expensive-looking limousine. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only lead I have so far. I came to Krakow here, following those two, and was successful in finding out where a red-haired woman and a rich man stayed at this very hotel, the Forum. His name is Baron Von Limbach. I could not get a name for her. They left together in his car. Run his name for me please.”

“I’ll check on him,” Houser said. “What do you think the chances are that the redhead is out pilot?”

“The entire situation is an enigma,” Ralls said. “She could just be the wife or girlfriend of this baron, a hiker, or even an escort girl. On the other hand, maybe he is the sponsor of that radical craft as he might be able to afford to fund such a project. What do you think?”

“It seems so hard to believe that a young lady with a craft that can descend from space into the atmosphere on some sort of rocket, in which she then travels seventeen-thousand miles an hour from one continent to another, would be hitchhiking for a ride,” Hauser said. “What do you intend to do now?”

“The only lead is this Baron Von Limbach, and that’s a long shot. The redhead might be some girlfriend or even a local hooker. But I think they headed for Germany, so I’ll head that way now. How soon will you be able to get me details available on this baron fellow?”

“I’ll get to work on it now. I should have some for you in a few hours, and more later. Shall I send them to your laptop?”

“Do that. I’ll sleep here in the hotel in Krakow and head out in the morning, depending on what you find.”

***

In the morning, Ralls awoke early to see what Hauser had dug up on this Baron Von Limbach. Hauser’s email was as follows:

Baron Von Limbach has German and Taiwan passports, and he has offices in Taipei and Berlin. He is described by some as an arms merchant but, in actuality in these times, the actual sale of weapons, unless it is on a small scale, is done directly between the weapons manufacturer and the end-user country. Taiwan, for example, has a law that forbids Taiwan and its army from purchasing weapons unless directly from the manufacturer. These laws are designed to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands and to prevent the governments from paying excessively for the weapons because of bribes and graft. However, there is much graft in Taiwan, and the baron brokers a number of these transactions and is paid outside of the actual purchase. But that is just for the actual weapons themselves.

There is a much larger business in military support for all sorts of military and related equipment, such as special sighting systems for tanks and mobile guns like Howitzers. These are very expensive.

One of the programs that he initiated was to fix the problem in dealing with rocket-propelled bombs that have rocket fuel and explosives that have a shelf life of several years and can become unstable or not function. There is also another problem with old weapons, which is the expense of getting rid of them when they are beyond their shelf life. Most countries are part of a treaty which bans dumping these into the ocean. His solution was to simply load up the rockets that are older first and the newest ones last. Imagine enemies dying from weapons just to get rid of the weapons!

He was behind a sale of a number of American-made Robinson helicopters to the Taiwan Government to use as observation platforms in their constant vigil against Mainland China. In Taiwan, the baron had a French-made FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) camera mounted on the helicopters to patrol the Taiwan Strait. That FLIR will pick up a person on a boat in relatively high seas at night. Those FLIRs sell for over a half million each. As the Taiwanese, like other Chinese, are not known for flying skills, he also set up a program to train the Taiwan helicopter pilots, from which he profited handsomely.