“I have a turnoff coming up soon,” she told him. She grinned, and her eyes were sparkling. Son of a bitch, he thought. She was actually enjoying this! “Perhaps we can find out there whether or not they are following us.”
“Good idea.” He glanced back again. The other car was still there, third in line behind them. “Do it.”
The maneuver was so sudden that it caught Murdock by surprise, even though he’d been expecting it. Inge slowed the Renault slightly. Then, without warning, without turn signals, she swerved sharply right across two lanes of traffic and into an exit ramp. As she braked with a squeal of overstressed tires into the off-ramp’s curve, Murdock heard horns blaring behind them… and then the gray Mercedes, trapped by the other cars around it, flashed past the exit and on down the Autobahn.
“Nicely done,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
“GSG9 training includes a special driving course.”
Murdock’s eyebrows raised. “I thought you worked for the BKA, Inge. You talk more like you’re GSG9.”
Her face colored slightly. “I suppose that’s because I always wanted to be GSG9. I started off with Bavarian Lander. I took the test for GSG9, and some of the early training, but failed the physical later on. Not enough upper body strength, they said.”
“They have female agents?”
“Not in the combat units,” she admitted. “But in some of the others. Reconnaissance and surveillance, for instance.” She wrinkled her nose. “And secretarial work, of course. But that was never what I wanted for myself. I had always wanted to be in a combat unit, since I first heard of the GSG9 when I was a girl. That must have been… oh, in the late seventies, sometime.” She laughed. “Am I giving away my age?”
“I won’t bother to add up the years,” Murdock said.
“My! So gallant for an American! Anyway, I easily passed the test for BKA special agent, and when an opening came up for a liaison officer with the GSG, well, my interest in the group was well known. I am only one of quite a few agents, of course, who serve as go-betweens with the GSG9.” She sighed. “I would still rather be in GSG Operations.” She glanced at Murdock out of the corner of her eye, and frowned. “You’re laughing at me.”
“Not at all.”
“Do you believe women should not be in combat?”
Murdock considered for a moment how best to answer. “I’ll be honest with you, Inge, and say I really don’t know. I’ve never for a moment doubted that a woman has every bit as much right to defend her home, her family, her country, or her ideas as a man. But integrating women fully into combat units carries a terrible price. I’m not sure we can afford it.”
She frowned. “What price?”
“Training… and testing criteria. You said you couldn’t pass the GSG9 physical. Okay, the fact is, most women have less upper body strength than most men. Most women have greater overall endurance than most men, on a long march, say, but they can’t lift as much, having more trouble chinning-up into a second-story window, and they’d be at a real disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat with a male opponent.”
“Not if the woman knows karate.”
Murdock laughed. “What are you, black belt?”
“Brown belt, second degree.”
“Good for you. Still, that doesn’t have much to do with the real world.”
“But if a woman has trained until she is strong enough to do what is expected of her, then she should be allowed to do anything she wants, don’t you think?”
“You know, Inge, I think my only real problem with the integration of women into combat is that in too many cases, the training requirements of the various services or units have been knocked down either so that women can qualify to fill a quota, or because requirements demanding great strength, especially great upper body strength, are perceived as somehow unfair. Combat is never fair, life is not fair… and the qualifications for the people who have to depend on one another to survive combat shouldn’t be fair either. If a man can do a job better, more efficiently, with less risk to himself and the other members of his team, then a man should be in that slot, and to hell with political correctness or feminist rights.”
Inge was silent for a long time. “You are a very direct man,” she said at last. “You don’t try to put an attractive coating on what you believe.”
“You asked me what I thought… ”
“I like honesty in a man,” she said. “Even when it is misguided. Here we are… ”
Inge lived in an apartment complex in the town of Rüsselsheim, midway between Wiesbaden and Frankfurt-am-Main, and only about ten kilometers from Frankfurt’s Rhein-Main International Airport. The two of them went up to her apartment together. Murdock waited in her living room with a Dortmunder beer while Inge vanished into the bedroom to change, and he had time to learn from her bookshelves and record cabinet that she was interested in history — especially military history — martial arts, horses, cats, detective novels, and soft rock. Periodically, the sky would roar as a big jet flew overhead on its way to or from the airport nearby, and he wondered how she was able to sleep.
When Inge emerged from the bedroom a few moments later, the businesswoman’s professional look was gone. The low-cut, high-slit evening dress she was wearing now, in a dark maroon set off by earrings and a single strand of pearls, was breathtaking on her figure. Her golden hair was down now, swirling delightfully across her bare shoulders.
“So,” she said as Murdock rose to his feet. “About that seafood…”
“SEALs generally catch their own seafood,” he told her. “Now if you’d said steak…”
“I know just the place. And not too far from here either.” It was still light outside as they emerged from the apartment building and started walking arm-in-arm across the parking lot to the place near the street where Inge had parked the car. The sun had set, but the sky was still fully light… light enough for Murdock to spot the gray Mercedes parked on the far side of the street and recognize it, with near certainty, as the car that had been following them on the Autobahn. He didn’t say anything to Inge, but he did let go of her arm and fall back a half step behind her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him, slowing.
“Keep walking,” he said, glancing about. The Mercedes was empty. There was a lot of thick shrubbery in front of the apartment where attackers could wait unseen. There was also a panel truck parked next to Inge’s car that hadn’t been there before.
Murdock wasn’t carrying a weapon. German gun laws were strict, and arranging for a foreigner to get a permit required so much red tape that he’d decided not to bother even trying. He was regretting that decision now.
Ahead, the back door to the panel truck banged open, and two men in utility workers’ coveralls climbed out, glanced around the parking lot, then started walking directly toward Murdock and Inge. He couldn’t tell if they were armed, though one was carrying something that looked like a toolbox. In fact, they could be — probably were — just what they appeared to be. You’re getting paranoid, Blake, he told himself fiercely.
And yet there was that empty gray Mercedes parked on the street. Was it really the same car? Had it been following them earlier?
The safest move might be to simply turn around and go back to the apartment, a stronghold with a single entrance, easily defended. That might be a little difficult to explain to Inge — she would assume that he was interested in something other than a steak dinner — but Murdock was by nature a cautious man, his career in the Navy SEALs notwithstanding. And she’d seen the Mercedes too, back on the Autobahn.