"Ciao," Jake returned. "Don't say it. I'm two minutes late."
"It's always better to come late than early," Toni said softly.
Jake smiled. "Can't beat that argument."
"I see that you're calling from Germany," Toni said. "What are you doing there?"
"I'm here on business," Jake said, glancing at Walt.
Walt got up and headed toward the door. Jake gave him a thumbs up and a smile.
"You left the Agency. Who are you working for now?"
Jake thought for a moment, wondering how much to tell her at first. It wasn't a matter of trust, but more of a professional courtesy.
"Can you tell me anything about a technology transfer from an A-7 squadron aboard the aircraft carrier Roosevelt?" Jake asked.
From the silence on the other end of the line, Jake already had his answer.
"Jake, how in the hell do you find out about things like this?"
"If you remember Monaco, Toni, I've always been lucky." Jake paused for a moment. "I need your help."
"Jake, you know you can count on me," she said seriously. "What do you need?"
"Well, I'm working privately for Teredata International Semiconductors, the same company that has had some of its stuff come up missing from that avionics upgrade to the A-7 that I assume you're working on. TIS has some pretty important stuff missing up here on some of its contracts as well. I've been here a while now, but my boss wants me to go to Italy to see if I can plug that leak."
"You're always welcome here, Jake," she said. "When are you coming?"
"I'll be there by morning," Jake said. "I'm not sure what time. It depends on if I run into any trouble along the way."
Toni laughed out loud. "Trouble does have a tendency of following you around, Jake."
"I've got to go, Toni," he said. "I can't wait to see you…it's been far too long."
"Yes, it has," she said softly.
They both hung up gently at the same time.
Jake put the secure phone back in its case and quickly hitched up Walt's phone as normal. He turned and looked into a small mirror above the coat hangers of a wooden umbrella rack. He looked so old. He took a deep breath and released the air slowly.
A harsh voice echoed through the marble corridor of the Wiesbaden Bahnhof terminal announcing the arrival of a train from Cologne. Jake looked at his watch; exactly noon. Damn thing's on time, he thought. German efficiency.
Through a glass enclosure, Jake watched a portly man sorting Deutschemarks and punching buttons. Then a white ticket with holes popped up through a metal counter, was whisked by a chubby hand and flipped to the hole under the glass.
"Danke," the man said as he looked at the woman in line behind Jake.
Jake looked at the ticket to ensure it was for a round trip to Bremerhaven, and then stuffed it into the inside pocket of his leather coat. While inside his coat, he slid his finger across the butt of his 9mm CZ-75 as if checking his wallet to ensure it hadn't been pick pocketed.
He turned and walked down the long passageway with a high glass ceiling. His footsteps echoed in time with countless others. He stopped for a second to look at a schedule of departures and arrivals encased in a metal frame with glass front. He knew what the schedule said, but the glass was a near perfect mirror to check behind him. Gunter's two men were still there, stopped when he had, less than twenty paces behind him. Gunter was still nowhere in sight. Jake had caught them looking over Walt Kaiser's house and led them here.
Jake waited for the last call for the train to Bremerhaven, and then slowly boarded up the metal stairs. Once inside, he slipped through from car to car looking for a seat in the crowded compartments. He couldn't see his two pursuers, but he knew they were there.
When he reached the second to the last car from the engine, he quickly dropped out of the train and onto the dock before descending the stairs that led to an underground passageway beneath the tracks. He heard the train slowly pulling away above him.
Once outside, he jumped into the first cab and directed the driver to Mainz Centrum. After he got there, he found the first downtown bank machine and withdrew money from his Luxembourg account. Then he caught another cab and went to a car rental outlet just outside the Frankfurt International Airport. Jake paid cash for a Fiat using false identification. In the parking lot, he swapped some of his gear from the Audi he had been driving for the last couple of days, and then slowly drove out onto the Autobahn and started driving south. He would have to set a fast pace to make Rome by morning.
CHAPTER 25
The charcoal gray Mercedes pulled up slowly next to the curb, stopped, and the headlights went out. In a few minutes, a dark blue Fiat van pulled up behind the Mercedes and parked. Two men got out of the van, hesitated, and then proceeded to the driver's window of the Mercedes. The driver's power window came down slowly.
Parked down the road and obscured by bushes, Herbert Kline lifted a small parabolic microphone from the passenger seat of his car and aimed it through his open window toward the men at the side of the Mercedes. He adjusted the volume on his headset to bring in the conversation at over two hundred meters.
"We ran into a problem," said the Fiat driver.
"Obviously," Gunter said. "If things had gone as planned you wouldn't be here now. You'd be trailing Jake like I told you. How did he lose you?"
The men looked at each other. The thin man was content with letting the large driver explain their failure. "He bought a round trip train ticket for Bremerhaven at the Wiesbaden bahnhof and then…."
"Wait, let me guess," Gunter interrupted. "By the time you looked for him and realized that he wasn't on the train, you two were half way to Denmark."
Herb couldn't help himself. He started laughing so hard the microphone wouldn't stay put long enough to bring in the conversation. When he realized he could be missing something important, he held his breath long enough to settle down.
"Where could he be?" Gunter asked.
The men shrugged their shoulders.
"Shit! Do I have to do all the Goddamn thinking around here? Where was he when you last saw him?"
"The train," said the thin man finally.
"No, you idiot. Before that. He was at his Polizei friend's house. So, it makes sense that he might know where Adams went. Find out. But don't kill the Polizei. We don't need that kind of attention. Bring him to me at our favorite spot."
"When?" asked the fat man.
"As soon as possible. The boss needs that information now to make the plan work."
The men turned swiftly, got back into the van, and sped away. The Mercedes lights came on and the large sedan crept away from the curb and down the road.
Herb put his gear away and started driving to the nearest phone to warn Walt Kaiser. Gunter had finally made a mistake that could be exploited, Herb thought. He had every intention of taking advantage of his mistake.
CHAPTER 26
The city lights shone across the dark Adriatic harbor glistening off the slick water. The cloudless sky brightened the fishing pier with shadows and silhouettes of men heading to the closest bar for warming spirits. The starry night brought a bitter chill with it, and frost was forming on anything not warm enough to fend it off.
Kurt Lamar crouched shivering in the shadows behind a pile of wet fishing nets. He had left Rome with only a thin short jacket, not realizing he would be out this late or this far from Toni's warm apartment. He crossed his arms, tucked his fists deep behind his biceps, and hunched his shoulders forward in a vain attempt to warm his neck.
Kurt could only wonder what Jason Dalton was doing on such a squalid pier on a Saturday night. The clothes Dalton wore as he left his Rome apartment should have alerted Kurt that something was up. The casual pants and shirt with no tie were a stark contrast to his normal expensive three piece suit. But with only one stop for gas along the way, Dalton had been easy to follow…almost too easy.