“Suicide,” Wally said in disbelief. He sank down into his chair, fingers gripping the receiver. “Why commit suicide if you've just embezzled the nation?” His eyes were fixed on Caroline's face, but there was no expression in them; he might have been looking at a featureless wall.
“All right, Vie. I understand. I'll get back to you tonight.”
He hung up.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Vie Marinelli, from Budapest.”
“And?”
“Istvan Lajta committed suicide last night. Or early this morning.”
Shephard looked up.
“The Hungarian Minister of Finance?”
“Lajta killed himself?” Caroline was shocked. “But he's young — a rising star in the Liberal Party! People talked about him as a future prime minister.”
“His assistant found him this morning. One bullet through the temple, gun lying on the floor.” Wally grimaced. “His wife identified it as Lajta's.”
“He had a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago,” Shephard protested.
“Even that, it seems, is no shield against bullets.”
“They're sure it was suicide?” Caroline persisted.
“There was a note — or a confession, I guess — typed on the guy's computer screen.”
She snorted.
“Anybody can type, Wally. What'd Lajta confess to?”
“Embezzling the Hungarian treasury.”
Shephard whistled.
“That includes at least a hundred million in IMF loans. The ministry is scrambling to sit on the news and trace the funds.”
“So they called Vie Marinelli.” Caroline immediately understood. The CIA's Chief of Station was usually declared to a friendly host country, and depending on the relationship, he could serve as a governments sounding board in times of crisis.
“Vie has asked for Secret Service assistance. The Treasury guys are pretty good at chasing down electronic transfers.”
“But why?” she asked, working it out. “Why put a bullet in your brain if you've just pulled off the heist of the century?”
“Remorse?”
She groaned.
“Oh, come on, Wally.”
“He was murdered,” Tom Shephard said brusquely.
Caroline caught his meaning and threw it back. “The only reason to kill Lajta —”
“Is if he didn't do it,” Tom finished. “Whoever stole the cash left Lajta holding the bag.”
“Vie seemed certain it was suicide,” Wally objected, “and he's not stupid. The building hadn't been broken into—” He stopped short and went very still.
“Your friend Anatoly,” Caroline said grimly. “No wonder old what's-his-acronym hung up on Gladys.”
Wally didn't reply. Instead, he reached for the phone and dialed a number. But before it rang, he slammed down the receiver.
“If Lajta died sometime during the night, Anatoly won't even be back in Hamburg yet. Shit. I've got to get to him —”
“Before Krucevic does.” Caroline picked up a silver letter opener and studied the engraving a message of thanks from one of Wally's previous postings. “Do you seriously think Krucevic will let him go?”
“I don't know.” Wally sank back into his chair, defeated.
“Why would 30 April steal from the treasury?” Tom Shephard asked. “If you're going to rob a bank, rob one in Switzerland. Not Hungary. I don't get it.”
But Caroline did.
“Fritz Voekl doesn't want Switzerland,” she said. “Switzerland is clean and well ordered and more efficient than ten Germanys. Fritz wants a reason to clean up the wrong side of the tracks.”
“What are you saying?”
“Voekl needs a cause. A crisis. He wants a plausible reason to send German troops throughout the neighboring countries. The countries that can't stop the Muslim hordes from invading the German sphere of influence. Voekl wants an invitation to take over.”
“The reconquest of the Third Reich?” Shephard was dismissive.
“Yes,” Caroline retorted. “What else is so risky it requires a hostage Vice President and a hamstrung U.S.?”
She drove the letter opener deep into the soil of Wally's wilting plant.
“The chancellor is attempting something so enormous so barefaced that only the most desperate measure can sustain it. Voekl wants Jack Bigelow to stand aside while he annexes Central Europe.”
“First he's funding terrorists, now he's Hitler. That's ridiculous”
“Is it? He's already got people in Prague. A couple of bombs and a pat on the back managed that one. Now Hungary. When news of the treasury heist gets out and it will, no matter how tightly they hold a lid on it fortunes will be lost. The currency destabilized. We'll see blood in the streets. And I guarantee you that Voekl's Volksturm won't be far behind.”
“I can't believe you're saying this. Ask anybody in Germany, they'll tell you the Reich was an aberration.”
“If it happened once,” Caroline argued, “it can happen again. Only more subtly this time, while nobody's looking. It'll happen with money and friendship and technical assistance and some brilliant political maneuvering on the side.”
“Not in our lifetime,” Shephard insisted. “We wouldn't allow it.”
“We just did,” Caroline said.
Eight
Berlin, 2:45 p.m.
Young Paul, as Mrs. Saunders had called him, pulled his plumber's van to the curb in front of the children's playground on Kolmarer Strasse in Prenzlauerberg. It was a wonderful playground, famed throughout Berlin, filled with toy mills, large pumps, a variety of pulleys and chutes — an industrial wonderland for city children. Mahmoud Sharif's small boys, ages four and two, loved it. They lived only a hundred yards away, in an apartment building on the corner of Knaackestrasse.
Paul was driving a serviceable white van in the Agency's possession, a van whose sides proclaimed in correct German lettering that he was a plumber of distinction. He eased along Kolmarer Strasse until, from the vantage of his driver's seat, he had an unobstructed view of Sharif's building. It was five blocks and a world apart from the safe house Sharif had used that morning.
Paul's sleek blond hair was covered with a white cap, and he wore canvas overalls in place of his usual Italian suiting. Behind him, in the body of the truck, sat Fred Leicester and thirty thousand dollars' worth of electronic equipment.
Paul turned off the ignition and delved into a paper sack of lunch. It was well after the German workman's usual hour for eating, but perhaps the plumber of distinction had been preoccupied earlier with an emergency. He brought forth some bread and wurst and a bottle of pilsner and proceeded to gaze enraptured at the horde of youngsters screaming among the iron cages of the play structure. It was a working-class neighborhood; Prenzlauerburg had always been so, under the kaiser and the Nazis and then the Communists and now the West. Lately it had submitted to a rage for gentrification. But many of the young faces were dusky and exotic, the hair uncompromisingly black.
Paul ate slowly. Inside the van, Fred fiddled with buttons and winced at the whine in his earphones.
In the building on the corner of Knaackestrasse, Mahmoud Sharif cleared his throat and flushed a toilet. The four-year-old slapped his brother and stole a toy. A woman named Dagmar — spiky blond hair, beautiful eyes rimmed in kohl — picked up the baby and carried him into the kitchen. She spoke to him in German, her voice husky with smoke.
Paul took a swig of beer. Fred listened, and waited for a call.
“Wally?”
The COS looked up from the sandwich he was eating and said, “Yes, Gladys?”
She glared darkly but let it slide.
“The boys just called in. They're in position outside Sharif's apartment.”
“Thank you, Gladys.”
“Oh, will you stop?” Her head disappeared.
Caroline's nerves fluttered to life.
“Would that be Mahmoud Sharif?”
Wally reached for a napkin.
“Paul and Fred are out trolling. Just in case Sharif has anything to say.” He glanced at Tom Shephard, who remained slumped in his seat.