The map took him two miles out of town, through a tunnel cut into the side of the mountain, and into the valley beyond. He turned off the main road and drove another mile before spotting the signs Jurgen had mentioned, then followed them to a small gravel clearing surrounded by forest. A sign with red lettering pointed down a traiclass="underline" “Salzburg-Paal Zug Stelle.”
He got out and started unloading his gear. The sun was an hour from setting, but the surrounding mountains and thick canopy cast the valley in twilight. Briggs clicked on his flashlight and shined the beam into the tree line. He saw only blackness; it was at once beautiful and forbidding. Hansel and Gretel, where are you? he thought. With the forests of Germany and Austria as their inspiration, it was little wonder the Brothers Grimm had managed to conjure up such dark tales.
He put the duffel on his shoulder and started down the trail.
After two hundred yards he came to a wooden footbridge that led him over the old rail line, now partially covered in vines and foliage. Lengths of the old track, brown with rust, peeked through the greenery. Across the footbridge a platform had been built on the shore overhanging the water. At the railing stood a squat, black marble obelisk bearing a gold plaque. In German, it listed the names of the dead in alphabetical order.
The surface of the Neumvield See was perfectly calm, a mirror against which the surrounding mountains shined in the dying light. The air was crisp and still. Briggs stared at the trees along the bank, expecting to see them sway with a gust of wind, but they stood frozen, as though painted against the background. Somewhere an owl gave a double hoot, then went silent.
He knelt down and dipped his fingers in the water. It was cold, no more than sixty-five degrees. He did some quick calculations in his head. Given the temperature and depth, he could afford at most three ten-minute dives.
He was about to slip into his gear when something near the footbridge caught his eye: a chunk of gray amid the foliage. Flashlight held before him, he stepped over the tracks and knelt down. Half-hidden by the undergrowth was a cinder block. Curiously, it was in perfect condition, unblemished by moss or lichen. He turned it over and found the grass underneath still green.
Tanner glanced back at the shoreline, an idea forming in his head.
He rooted around until he found a branch long enough for his needs, then walked back to the memorial, slipped into his dive gear, and lowered himself off the platform and into the water. Stepping carefully, probing ahead with the branch, he waded out until the water reached his chest. Suddenly the branch plunged downward, almost slipping from his grip. Here was the shelf Jurgen had warned him about.
Briggs slipped the mask over his face, took a deep breath then clicked on his headlamp and ducked under the water. It took just five minutes to find what he was looking for. Driven into the rocky sand was a heavy steel stake; attached to this was a rope that trailed over the edge of the drop-off. Like the cinder block on shore, the rope looked brand-new.
Hand-over-hand, he began reeling in the rope. After six feet, the line jerked taught. Unless he was wrong, knotted to the other end he’d find a second, and maybe third, cinder block — and very close by the Salzburg-Paal Geist Zug.
Simple but effective. Tanner thought. Svetic and his men had simply rented a boat and, using the memorial as a starting point, gone fishing, trolling along the shore and dipping the block until they struck something solid. Then, like mountaineers on a fixed line, they had simply followed the anchor to the train and slipped inside — and out of the grasp of the undertow.
With his foot hooked beneath the stake, Briggs resurfaced, tested his regulator, then ducked back under. He grabbed the rope, gave the stake one last tug to be sure it was secure, then kicked once and slipped over the edge.
41
The message on Oaken’s computer screen became the proverbial crack that shattered the dam. In the space of an hour, the puzzle he’d been pondering snapped into focus. He called Dutcher, who was already at CIA headquarters, and gave him the gist of what he’d found.
“Your theory explains a lot,” Dutcher said. “Get in your car and break some speed limits. I’ll round up Sylvia, George, and Len. We’ll be waiting.”
“Whether we’ve realized it or not, we’ve been making some assumptions,” Oaken told the group an hour later. “The biggest one is that Litzman and Svetic have been collaborating on something — that their goals are tied to one another. Two bad guys, moving from place to place like ghosts … It was a natural hunch.”
“What are you’re saying? It’s all a coincidence?” said Len Barber.
“No, we know better than that The man Briggs and Ian snatched in Innsbruck — Grebo — told them he had no idea what either Svetic or Litzman was up to. I believe him — at least partially. I doubt Svetic told anyone about Kestrel; he wouldn’t share a secret like that unless it were absolutely necessary. As far as Grebo goes, he was simply following orders. He was doing exactly what he’d been instructed to do: Keep Litzman updated on Svetic’s movements.”
Sylvia said. “Whose orders?”
“The Serbian SDB,” Oaken replied. The SDB, or Sluzba Drzavne Bezbednosti, was Serbia’s State Security Service, the country’s foreign intelligence service. “I think this man Grebo is either an SDB operative, or an agent they planted in Svetic’s group.”
“Hang on a moment,” George Coates said. “Serbia? Where did you come up with that?”
“It’s part guess, part deduction.”
The break had come from a single phone number, Oaken explained. Of all the encrypted numbers he’d been able to ferret from Karl Litzman’s layered cell-phone accounts, one had resisted all his attempts to crack it Until a few hours before. Realizing it was another Marseilles number, Oaken called Bob, his friend in the consulate’s Naval Criminal Investigative Service. It took Bob less than an hour to track down the lead.
“It’s an apartment block in Ville Tirana,” Bob had reported. “All these Balkan enclaves are crowded into a ten-block radius — Bosnians, Albanians, Serbians, Macedonians … they all live on top of one another.”
“What about this one?”
“Despite the name, Ville Tirana’s almost all Serbs. In fact, I did a little digging. Two months ago, the Marseilles police raided the building and arrested half a dozen Serbs. Word has it they were all former Arkan boys.”
Oaken knew the term. Arkan was the alias for Selijko Razflatovic, who in 1992 had been the commander of the Serb Volunteer Guard, a paramilitary force trained and equipped by the Serbian ministry of the interior — the parent agency of the State Security Service, or SDB — to serve as “special purpose teams” in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“Death squads,” Oaken said.
“You got it,” replied Bob. “French intelligence is pretty keen on the neighborhood. My guess is, they think the SDB is using it as a way station for operatives heading into Germany and Great Britain.”
Sylvia Albrecht considered Oaken’s story for a few moments, then said, “And what about Litzman’s contact with the Bosnian enclaves in Marseilles … the Bihac Istina?”
“Window dressing,” Oaken replied. “Groundwork for investigators to follow.”
Coates said, “And Svetic?”
“The Bosnian scapegoat. That’s the one part of the theory that’s still sketchy, but I think we’ll find Risto Svetic’s been a bad guy on the Balkan scene for a while — somebody Serbia can easily paint as a terrorist.”