Without Options (16 page)

Andre smiled and poured Jake more wine. “We’ll move on to a Pinot Noir next.” Hesitating, as if searching for the right words, he continued, “We found the two men dead just across the French border south of Luxembourg City, and later someone mysteriously called in the location of another man. . .gently crucified in a vineyard. They were all Persians, based on the car. They had no identification on them, though. I would bet my life that the two died from a bullet from the gun under your left arm.”

“Again, self defense. They were the same men who’d shot at me in Luxembourg.”

“Yes, I know. The Police Grand-Ducale in Luxembourg are taking credit for your work, giving some support to the French authorities. You see, all is well in the Grand Duchy. Come back and spend your money. Did you get any information from the man taped to the vines?”

“That’s why we’re here,” Jake said. “They’re Iranians, but I think it’s more likely they’re not Persians. They’re Kurds.”

“The man told you that?”

“He didn’t need to. I understand a few Kurdish phrases from my work there. He questioned not only the veracity of my parents, but indicated I should try to satisfy myself with extreme prejudice. I assured him that wasn’t possible. Many have tried.”

“I’ll bet. What did he tell you?” Andre pressed.

“Will you help me?”

The Interpol man hesitated. “Of course.”

Jake told Andre everything the man had told him, including the preposterous notion that somehow Gunter Schecht had risen from the dead and placed a price on Jake’s head.

“Now you know why I need your help,” Jake said to Andre.

“How can I help?”

Jake glanced sideways at Alexandra, who pulled Jake’s laptop from his backpack and handed it to him.

“Just a little internet access,” Jake said.

Andre leaned back in his comfortable sofa like a cowboy easing back on his saddle. “You could’ve gone to a cybercafe to do that.” Then his brain contemplated Jake like a chess master does to a worthy opponent. “You want an untraceable secure access to my Interpol database.”

Jake nodded.

“Why don’t you just access her German Intel database?”

Jake didn’t budge, but he saw Alexandra shift in her chair slightly.

“How did I know?” Andre asked. “First of all, she’s carrying a pistol on her right hip. Second, you wouldn’t let her know what you’re doing if you didn’t trust her. And last of all, you wouldn’t trust her unless she was either CIA, BND or Austrian Intel. Given her accent, I’d say she was Bavarian. Which means BND.” He hesitated to let his revelations set in. “Besides, we got a Blue Notice on one Alexandra Schecht this morning. You need to update your photo. You are much more beautiful in person. Any relation to Gunter Schecht?”

Alexandra’s jaw tightened but she said nothing.

“I think you know that also,” Jake said. “Why’d they issue a Blue Notice on her? She’s done nothing.”

“A Blue Notice simply asks local law enforcement to acquire additional information about a person’s possible illegal activities,” Andre instructed. “She was with you when you shot those men this morning. Her car was caught on another video camera picking you up. You understand.”

Yeah, Jake understood. He had gotten Alexandra in way too far and he wasn’t pleased with himself. “Which is why we can’t get onto her BND account. Can you give us access?”

Subdued, Andre nodded his head in agreement.

Jake got onto his computer and used Andre’s access to the Interpol database. He first did a series of requests for information on those who he’d shot that morning, including the man he’d interrogated. He quickly saved that data to his laptop. Then he searched a few more areas of interest. While he was on the computer, he noticed Andre had slipped down the sofa, ending directly across from Alexandra. The two of them were speaking German and then switched to French. Laughing. Drinking wine. A half hour later and Jake had downloaded more data than he could go over in a week. But he didn’t have a week. He’d used Anna’s access to Interpol many times, with and without her permission, so he knew his way around. He also knew how to have their computer analyze the data in various strings. While that was going on in the background, Jake quickly checked on a few names that had come up. Names that he’d recognized from his past. His computer beeped when the Interpol analysis was complete. But Jake’s brain had reached the same notion about thirty seconds before the computer. All of the dead men, from those who killed Anna to the man he’d killed at his apartment in Innsbruck, to the men who’d come for him in St. Johann, and to the Iranian Kurds who’d tried to kill him that morning—it had all been a grand ruse to make him believe the hit had been ordered by someone from a former case. Well, the computer didn’t actually say that. The program simply showed no relationship among all the men, and no likely coordinated attempt. Someone wanted Jake to look into the Kurds as a source, or perhaps the Serbs, or even Gunter Schecht, who was dead. By doing so, the real source of the hit, the one pulling the strings, was someone as far from those sources as possible. Sleight of hand. Have him look one way while the knife sticks him in the back. Or, more likely, the bullet. But that was also disturbing, because only certain people knew about these cases in their totality. And that list wasn’t as long as one would guess. A list that Jake would have to deal with alone. He should’ve come to this conclusion a long time ago. Perhaps he would have if his mind wasn’t thinking about the death of Anna, and his body wasn’t constantly being attacked. That was the play. Much like Andre and his chess. You make a player think you’re working your way in to put the opponent in check or mate, they let down their guard, and you steal their queen. You keep picking away like that until they have no more defenses left to protect their king. Time to take a few more pieces. Other than pawns. Go on offense, Jake.

17

Early evening now, and Toni drove her rental Opel along the German Autobahn near Martinislautern. She exited at the Ramstein Air Base exit and then slowly drove along the priority road toward the front gate of the American Air Force Base. She’d gotten a call from the CIA director, Kurt Jenkins, earlier in the day, telling her to pick up a package at the base Office of Special Investigations detachment. She’d been on the sprawling Ramstein many times while working in Europe, but hadn’t been given any indication as to what she was picking up. Most communications in the Agency now were not only highly encrypted, they were easily downloaded to hand-held devices, which Toni carried at all times. However, she also knew that her boss, Kurt Jenkins, was a bit old school and liked to maintain some of the old communications methods. Couriers were still important to him—especially if he felt other methods had been compromised in some way.

She signed Franz Martini onto the base and they proceeded to the OSI detachment building.

“What do you suppose they have for you here?” Franz asked her solemnly.

Toni had a feeling it was a package of information. Something she could have just as well accessed with her computer. “I don’t know,” she said. “Intel I’d guess.”

They’d discussed all afternoon what to do—try to follow Jake and hopefully catch up with him, or move in another direction. Part of her wanted to drop Franz off at the nearest airport and let him fly back to Austria. His health seemed to be deteriorating by the minute. His coughing had forced them to go to a pharmacy in Trier and get him a suppressant, which he was sucking down like an early-morning alcoholic takes down his first drink of the day.

She pulled in front of the OSI building and parked. A sign out front said ‘No Smoking Within 100 Feet of Building.’

“I’m sure that means outside,” Toni assured him. “They won’t let you inside anyway. So why don’t you stay here and have a smoke while I retrieve whatever’s here for me.”

He nodded agreement.

Getting out, she saw him light up as she rounded the front of the car. Although she’d said he could smoke in the car with her, he’d refrained from doing so. Smoking seemed to be the man’s only pleasure in life and she had no desire to take that from him.

After going through security inside, she was escorted to the office of the OSI detachment commander, a man in his early thirties with a full beard and long hair in a ponytail. He stood and shook her hand before slumping back into his leather task chair. The office had no windows and appeared to be in the exact center of the building, with sound-deadening walls much like the conference room at the German Intelligence building near Munich. She remained standing.

Toni glanced about the office for any package of size that might have come from the Agency. “Where’s my package?” she asked the commander.

He moved a few pieces of paper and produced a sealed folder the size of a DVD. He handed it to her and looked eager for her to open it there in front of him. It was in a standard diplomatic envelope with Kurt Jenkins’s familiar signature across the seal. Inside, she knew, would be a DVD carefully sealed further in an airtight plastic like a freezer bag. It would have survived a plane crash packaged like that.

“Must be pretty important,” the OSI officer said, “to be flown in here on an F22.”

She didn’t take the bait. “It’s a mix CD from my boyfriend. Yeah, we’ve been having a few problems and he likes to make grand gestures. Thanks for your help.” She left him there pulling on his beard.

By the time she got back outside, smoke filled the inside of her car, making it look like it was on fire. She opened the door and let air flow for a moment.

“You forgot to leave me the key,” Franz said. “Couldn’t open the window.” He glanced at the package. “That’s all?”

“Afraid so.” She took a seat behind the wheel and thought for a moment. She needed to view whatever was on this DVD alone. Her cell phone rang and she checked to see who it was. Kurt Jenkins.

She flipped open her secure phone and said, “Yeah.”

“You got the package, I understand,” Jenkins said.

“Sure did.”

“You need to go over the data immediately. I’ve reserved two rooms for you at Air Force Billeting. Yours will be one visiting dignitaries normally use—colonels and general officers. You can review the information there. Give me a call once you’re done.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“Our friend is still in France. At least as far as we know. We’re guessing he won’t change transportation, since he’ll want his guns.”

“With the money he has,” she said, “he could charter a flight. But we don’t even know where he’s going.”

“Check out the DVD.”

“All right.”

They both hung up.

“Everything okay?” Franz asked.

“You don’t mind staying here tonight, do you?”

“Not at all. But I could use a drink.”

Toni cranked over the car. “I hear that.”

Twenty minutes later and Toni had dropped Franz off at his base hotel room, where he planned on taking a nap before the two of them would go to the officers’ club for dinner and drinks. Meanwhile, Toni brought her laptop and set it up on her bed, letting it warm up as she stretched for a moment. She’d been locked up in the car for the past few days and felt constricted. What she really needed was a quick run or a long walk.

She broke the seal on the package and cut the DVD out of the inner plastic wrap. When she slid the DVD into her computer, the first thing that happened was a video image starting up. It was simply Kurt Jenkins sitting behind his desk talking to her, explaining that they had a number of analysts going through the data and would continue to do so. He was concerned about a leak of some type. Not on his end, but somewhere with their European partners.

“We still don’t know why someone wants Jake dead, but we think we’re getting closer,” Jenkins said. “This could be classic deception. So far there have been Kurdish Turks, Serbs, and now Iranian Kurds coming after Jake. That doesn’t even include the Eastern Europeans who killed his girlfriend two months ago. As you know, Jake was involved in the past with the Kurds, and they have long memories. However, it’s more likely that this is a ruse of some sort. If you send someone to assassinate another, you want someone with no possible ties to you. So a German might send a Chinese agent. But you know this. Then, I’m guessing, they knew that Jake would kill some of them and have law enforcement after him. They counted on this.”

She paused the video. Of course. She’d been so stupid. Concentrating on finding Jake and not even considering who was after him. Or why. Whereas she should have been seeking the source. She started the DVD again.

Jenkins continued. “That way they could monitor the progress and perhaps direct more assets. Then, once the deed was done, they would send someone to kill the killers. There would never be a payout of the million Euros. Review the data files and then call me on your secure cell. Alone.”

The video faded to black and the screen went to a set of file folders. She clicked on the folder labeled ‘The Dead.’ Inside was a folder for each man who’d been killed so far, from the two men two months ago that Jake had killed when Anna was murdered, to those two Jake had shot in France that morning.

She started at the beginning. Within an hour she’d read everything known about all of the dead men. It was truly an international affair, from the Hungarian and Bulgarian Jake killed two months ago to the Iranian he last had contact with in France. That man had been somewhat interesting, with his degree from the University of Michigan. Nothing was jumping out and leading her in any significant direction, though. Could it have simply been hired guns from all these various countries on purpose to drive the Agency and Jake in different directions? A ruse to confuse? That’s what she’d have to find out.

But by now her stomach was starting to rumble. She took out the DVD, put on her leather coat, and slid the disc into an inside pocket. Time for a little dinner and drinks.

18

Berlin, Germany

Much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Since Gustav had instructed his associate to try to connect the dots with the bodies found in Berlin to possible missing persons and those to murders elsewhere, Andreas had possibly come up with something important. A man had been shot in Prague three weeks ago, and a week later a body had shown up in the Spree. The medical examiner had estimated the time of death to be five or six days prior to the find, which would have been a couple of days after the Prague killing. It wasn’t much to go on, Gustav knew, but it was a direction. Especially with the possibility that the Turk had tried to kill Jake Adams in Innsbruck and then could have tried to cash in on the hit in Berlin just after that. The clincher? The man who was killed in Prague was a former spy with UZSI, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Czech Republic. Which is why Andreas and Gustav hadn’t been able to get much information on the death of the man. The authorities there had simply called it a street crime. A robbery gone bad. But Gustav wasn’t buying that explanation.