“Some link must be there. The computer found it.”
“Then the computer's wrong. It's happened before.”
“But somebody with knowledge and skill made the Gate's device, Wally. This was a surgical hit. Most of the surrounding buildings are intact. You don't get that with a barrel of fertilizer and kerosene.”
“No. You don't. But neither do you walk up to Mahmoud and say, "Hey, brother, done any jobs for the infidel lately?"”
“There are subtler ways of gathering information.”
“Maybe you should run this by Shephard. He's got good ties to the BKA the Bundesknminalamt, the German federal police. Maybe they could tap Sharif's phones. They can do it legally now, did you know that?”
Caroline nodded. For five decades the German constitution had forbidden wiretaps, a reaction to the Gestapo persecution of the Nazi era. That had changed a few years ago, when German prosecutors voiced their frustration at being denied the routine evidence a hundred other countries collected on suspected criminals.
Wiretaps.
With a surge of vertigo, Caroline felt the broad plank floor of Wally's living room careen upward. She'd just handed Wally Mahmoud Sharif — whose phone lines might lead directly to Eric. Stupid, stupid.
Dare would never forgive her. She pressed a hand to her forehead, willing the exhaustion of jet lag to recede.
“Are you sure you want to share this stuff with the BKA?” she asked.
“You mean DESIST? We probably won't. We can offer up Sharif for other reasons. But I'll let Tom handle that. He's pretty used to working liaison. Which reminds me. You'll see Tom tomorrow at the Interior Ministry. Bombing meeting. I'll pick you up at the Hyatt at ten-thirty.”
“You might want to check with Scottie Sorensen first,” Caroline suggested feebly.
“About the wiretapping, I mean. Just to be sure. I wouldn't want to end — run Scottie's authority.”
“Okay.” From the sound of Wally's voice, he was humoring her and trying not to feel annoyed. It was rare for an analyst to second-guess the station chief. “What exactly is worrying you, Mad Dog? The BKA are pretty good at intercepts, believe me. Makes you wonder how often they practiced under the old law.”
The floorboards steadied, her vertigo receded.
“Who are they tapping these days? Gastarbeiters?”
He laughed brusquely.
“Don't need wiretaps for them. Guest workers have no citizenship rights. Under the Voekl program of repatriation, you just frame 'em and deport 'em as fast as you can.”
“You really don't like the chancellor, do you, Wally?”
“What can I say, Carrie? I don't trust Voekl's politics. And he's a dangerous man.”
“Dangerous how?”
Wally took a pull on his beer.
“You're the leadership analyst.”
“I follow terrorists, not mainstream politicians.”
“Well, then maybe you should broaden your scope.”
She studied him over the rim of her wineglass.
“What are you saying?”
“Sometimes the boundaries between the state and the fringe aren't so clear. Look at Arafat. One day he's a guerilla hero, next he's a virtual head of state. Or Syria's Assad. How many nut sos with a gun did that guy fund from the presidential palace, huh? I won't even mention Qaddafi.”
“You think Voekl is funding terrorists?”
“Maybe not terrorists. I would never go so far as to suggest he's behind 30 April. He's not that stupid, Carrie. But there's been a rash of hate crimes throughout Central Europe. We think that Uncle Fritz's party is bankrolling some of them.”
“You think?”
Wally tossed his bottle in the trash.
“I know, I know — I need the evidence. All that certainty you analysts love. I'm working on it.”
“What kind of hate crimes? Guest workers? Petty stuff?”
“Not entirely.” Wally suddenly looked uneasy.
“If it were domestic incidents alone, we'd be inclined to sit back and bide our time. Chancellors come and go.
But this stuff is bleeding into other people's backyards. Take the Cafe Avram, for instance.”
“Café Avram.”
“Jewish revival place in old Krakow. Ever been to Krakow?”
Caroline shook her head.
“It's about three and a half hours due east as the crow flies. Eleven hours, if you're lucky, by the Polish roads. I drove over right after we landed here, back in early August. I wanted to see Auschwitz, or rather Brenda did. Some of her people died there.” He leaned forward, hands clasped idly between his knees.
“The camp and the rail yards are sitting right there in the middle of this gorgeous farmland, Carrie. Rolling hills, gnarled old trees, a man walking behind a horse — drawn plow, straight out of War and Peace. Some of the farmers were burning leaves. The essence of autumn, right? Only you draw it in with your breath and you can't help but think, the smell of burning. Ashes and burning. Everybody in that countryside must have smelled the ovens, and they went right on plowing.” He paused abruptly.
Caroline prompted, “Café Avram.”
“Right. The old Jewish quarter of Krakow is beautiful. Spielberg filmed Schindler's List there, you know? Café Avram had become a sort of cultural center. Jewish music, kosher food. A tourist mecca. Anyway, three months ago, somebody torched it. The owners slept over the shop. Both were killed by the fire. And their three kids.”
“And you think Voekl's party was behind the arson?”
“The Warsaw station is looking into it. They cabled us for information.”
Caroline frowned.
“But you said that no German politician can afford to be anti-Semitic. And why would a German party be operating beyond its borders?”
“All politics is local, Caroline. It's just the money that's international.”
“You actually suspect that the Social Conservatives are funding hate crimes in neighboring countries? But Wally, the potential for blowback is immense!”
“The Social Conservatives are funding local chapters of their own German party in small towns throughout the region,” Wally said tensely. “The SC is in Poland, its in Slovakia, it's even showing up in poorer sections of the Czech Republic and Hungary. It's a party that feeds on economic disaffection, Caroline, and there's plenty of disaffection in Central Europe. Communism destroyed their industry; now democracy is destroying their markets. Nothings easier for these poor bastards than to pick a leader who will blame the outcast of the moment and voila, everyone has a target for their anger.” He glanced at her.
“And there's a lot of anger, Carrie. I'm telling you, it scares the hell out of me.”
“So in Krakow, the outcasts were eating at Café Avram?”
“Sure. It takes one to know one. Jews have been the gastarbeiters of Poland for four hundred years.”
Caroline set down her wine. The alcohol was blurring her senses.
“Nobody likes Voekl, nobody trusts him .. . and yet here he is. Running the damn country. How did that happen, Wally?”
“There was a convenient death.”
Gerhard Schroeder. And 30 April had murdered him.
“Voekl was there to take advantage of it,” she said. “He'd amassed a considerable amount of power first.”
“Which means that your premise is wrong, Caroline. Somebody likes Voekl very much indeed. And they voted en masse.”
“More economic disaffection?”
“Maybe. Among the Ossies. Voekl comes from the east, you know. His claim to fame was running the best explosives plant in the GDR. He was an old Party hack before he was the face of the New European Union. But it's more than that. He's charming. He's plausible. He's telegenic in a media age.”
“If you like your men in jackboots.”
Wally laughed.
“Come on, Carrie! The man's a wet dream of Aryan motherhood! Silver hair, blue eyes. The Italian suits, the flashing white teeth. You've got to look beyond the furious rhetoric. Germans like their rhetoric delivered in a fist-pounding fashion.”