Jerkily, she nodded.
“They had guns, we didn’t,” he said. “But we’re still here, right?”
She nodded again, then took a deep breath and gave him an awkward self-conscious smile. “I guess we are. Still think women can’t handle themselves in combat?”
“Well, I know I’m not going to argue it with you. Not right now, at any rate.” He nodded toward her torn dress. “I think you’d better go change, don’t you? And maybe sit down for a bit, with a good, stiff drink.”
She seemed unconcerned about her dress. “What… what should we do about them?”
Murdock considered the question. Stooping, he again checked each of the fallen ambushers. One dead, the other three incapacitated. The woman might begin showing some interest in her surroundings before too long, but he was pretty sure the two “utilities men” would be out of it for an hour or more, at the very least. The biggest problem was that the panel truck might come back for them… maybe with reinforcements.
“Get their guns.”
“What?”
“I don’t want the neighborhood kids wandering by and picking up their guns. The woman’s pistol flew over there, somewhere, by those bushes. Then I want you to go inside and call the police. Or… maybe there’s a department in the BKA?”
“I’ll call Captain Halber,” she said. “He’s on duty at the watch desk tonight. He’ll know who to send.”
Inge began doing as she’d been told. Good. She needed something to keep her mind occupied, something to keep the emotional shock at bay. The woman’s pistol was a Chief’s Special, a snub-nosed .38 revolver, while the weapon in her dead companion’s waistband was a German-made Walther PPK. The man with the tool kit had been carrying the Uzi, of course, and both “utilities men” were packing heavy artillery in the form of.357 Magnum revolvers, hidden inside their bulky coveralls.
“You have any enemies?” he asked Inge as she showed him the arsenal. “Someone who might want to even an old score?”
“No, Blake,” she said. “This was an RAF hit.”
“Red Army? How do you know?” In fact, he’d begun to suspect as much himself. The ambush had not been a robbery attempt. The idea had been to swiftly overpower Murdock and the BKA woman and bundle them into that van… a kidnapping, in other words. Since neither of them would raise much in the way of ransom, Murdock could only assume that the kidnapping had been for either political or intelligencegathering purposes, and that pointed to a revolutionary or terrorist organization like the German RAF.
Inge knelt beside the woman, picking up her left arm and turning it so that Murdock could see the back of her hand. A small tattoo had been neatly incised into the skin, a small red circle with the unmistakable black silhouette of an H&K submachine gun.
“Rather stupid of them to advertise themselves that way,” Murdock said. The H&K, he remembered from various SEAL briefings on terrorist cells and personnel, had been adopted by the Red Army Faction as a kind of logo back in the seventies. He studied the unconscious woman’s face for a moment. It was hard, with knife-edged creases… an angry, bitter face, he decided. She might be in her early forties. Possibly the tattoo dated from the so-called People’s Revolutions of the seventies, though he wondered how she could have gone for twenty years without someone noticing and reporting her to the authorities.
On the other hand, Germans were as likely to mind their own business and stay uninvolved as any other group of people.
Using strips torn from the dead man’s shirt, Murdock tied the wrists and ankles of the three surviving attackers, just in case they recovered enough to wander off. As he worked, a small crowd began gathering. By the time Inge, dressed now in slacks and a white blouse, had returned from making her telephone call, a police car was on the scene as well. Weapons, prisoners, and body were all removed with a minimum of fuss, while uniformed officers dispersed the crowd. For over an hour, then, back in Inge’s apartment, Murdock and Inge went over what had happened with the police again and again, with Inge serving as translator, until Lieutenant Hopke and Mac MacKenzie arrived.
When the police had departed at last, MacKenzie grinned at Murdock. “Can’t you even have a nice night out on the town without getting into trouble, L-T?”
“Busman’s holiday, Mac. Lieutenant Hopke?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I need some firepower. Think your department could arrange it?”
“I think so. I think it might be a good idea if both of you were armed while you are in the country. You seem to have attracted some unwanted attention.”
“From my neighbors?” Inge said, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe that.”
“Did you know them well?”
“Not really.” She’d already been over this several times with the police. “They moved in a few months ago. I saw them now and then, in the hallway or in the laundry. The man’s name was Friedrick. The woman… I think her name was Erna, but I’m not sure. The name on their letterbox in the lobby was Dortman.”
“Some of Komissar’s people are in their apartment now,” Hopke said. “The police will be there with a search warrant before long, but Captain Steiner authorized a black-bag operation, before the uniform people muddy up the scene.” He glanced at Murdock. “This is not strictly legal, you see.”
“Understood. SEALs have to operate outside the strict limits of the law too, from time to time.”
“The trouble is,” Inge said, “why do you think it was Blake who attracted their attention? It seems to be too much of a coincidence that two RAF terrorists just happened to be living on my floor.”
“Quite correct, Inge,” Hopke said. “My guess, and it is only a guess at this point, is that they took that apartment to keep an eye on you. When Lieutenant Murdock here put in an appearance, however, they decided — or were ordered — to move.”
“Ordered?” Inge shuddered and closed her eyes. “By who?”
“Good question.”
“Do you have anything on that panel truck we saw?” Murdock asked.
“Nothing. Police helicopters are up, watching for a vehicle of that description, but I doubt that they’ll spot anything. The owners, if they are smart, will abandon it or get it quickly out of sight, and there are many white panel trucks on the Autobahn.”
“Sorry I didn’t get a license,” Murdock said.
“I doubt that it would have helped if you had.” Hopke shrugged. “These people are smart. They would have had fake plates.”
“I’m not so sure they were that smart. If that was a kidnapping attempt, it was pretty badly planned.”
Hopke smiled. “Perhaps, Lieutenant, they don’t know you are a SEAL. Or that SEALs are such formidable opponents. They must have thought that the threat of four people, displaying guns, would be enough to make you submit.”
“Maybe. If they didn’t know I was a SEAL, though, the question remains why they tried to pick us up at all.”
“If they have a mole with customs,” MacKenzie pointed out, “they would know we came in on a military flight. We’re in civilian clothes and we go straight to the BKA. One of us takes a lovely BKA agent back to her apartment. That’s got to make them curious.”