The sound of breaking glass from the front of the house brought his head up sharply. The back door — He crept out of the bedroom, turned left in the darkened hall, and saw the gloved hand snake through the shattered living-room window. They would have it open in seconds.
He sidestepped into the kitchen — and there, backlit in the alley streetlight, was the silent shape of a man. He was surrounded.
Horvath looked about wildly. He saw the too-obvious cupboards, the pathetic tray of cold supper his cleaning lady had prepared, the broom closet smelling sharply of vinegar and ammonia. He thrust the black knapsack behind a damp pail at the closet's rear just as Krucevic entered the kitchen. “Mhn,” Horvath said breathlessly, his back to the closet door.
“Did you have to break my window?”
Krucevic smiled.
“There are broken windows all over Budapest today. Besides, you didn't answer my knock.”
“I never heard it,” he said. That was certainly true; he had been lost in a fever of his own making. Horvath gestured toward the tray, the limp slices of meat and the tepid vegetables covered in plastic.
“I was just about to eat.”
“At midnight?”
“As you see. I... I was working late.”
“Poor Bela,” Krucevic said slowly. “Always the desperate grind. You should get away for a while. Take a break from all this.” He glanced at one of his men a malevolent-looking bruiser with a shaved head who stepped forward and took Horvath by the arm.
“You haven't said you're glad to see me, Bela.”
“I was just surprised, Mian, that's all. You're well?” The thug's hand was like an iron cuff above his elbow.
“Strange,” Krucevic mused. “I'd have said you weren't surprised at all. In fact, you looked like you were expecting me. Perhaps you'll tell me why while we drive.”
“Drive?”
“To your lab. I'm afraid, Bela, you took something that does not belong to you. And now I want it back.”
Part IV
Friday, November 12
One
Berlin, 2 a.m.
Anatoly Rubikov cared nothing for the lateness of the hour. Nor for the dull headache that throbbed in his temples, or the sourness in his mouth. He called his wife in Hamburg from the main Berlin train station and felt a shaft of joy at her sleepy hello. Then he told her he loved her and promised he would see her in the morning.
Next he dialed Wally Aronson's cellular phone. Wally answered on the second ring.
“Where are you?” the station chief asked.
“The Hauptbahnhof,” Anatoly replied. “I need to talk to you.”
“About Lajta?”
Anatoly nodded, as though the man might be able to see his face across the rat's maze of city streets.
“I'm scared to death,” he told him softly. “I've got to get out. You've got to get me out”
“You're still alive. Calm down, Anatoly.”
“He threatened my wife. My girls.”
“I understand.”
“Wally — ” The Russian safecracker hesitated, his pride still strong. “I have something for you. In exchange for my safety. I have it here, right now. I will give it to you.” His voice rose and broke, which was utterly unlike him.“But you must help me — ”
“Wait there,” the station chief interrupted curtly. “Buy your ticket to Hamburg and wait. I'll find you on the platform.”
Anatoly hung up. He glanced around. Two o'clock in the morning in Berlin's busiest terminus, and the place was almost deserted. He saw an old man in a newsboy cap, snoring on a bench. A kid in black leather, the arms cut raggedly away — probably a heroin addict, his eyes had the look of death in them. And a woman. A tired woman with two worn suitcases and a rumpled paperback. She was standing alone on the platform as though she had nowhere to go. And he had thought this morning that she was bound for home.
Their eyes met across the distance. Strange, Anatoly thought, that she had chosen a smoking car from Budapest when she had not lit a cigarette all day.
He picked up his duffel bag and walked casually toward the men's room, praying it would be empty. It was. He walked into the echoing tiled space, registered the window high in the wall. He picked a stall at random and locked it behind him. His fingers, when he unzipped the duffel, were trembling like a drunk's.
Inside was a change of clothing, two packs of Russian clove cigarettes, a magazine. And tucked into the bottom, a sheaf of folded papers. He drew them out.
There were footsteps in the bathroom now, the sound of a urinal flushing. The toilet was old-fashioned, its tank bolted under the ceiling with a chain dangling. Anatoly reached up and pulled the flush. Then he closed his eyes for an instant. Muttered something between a curse and a prayer.
Outside on the platform, Greta Oppenheimer discarded her paperback and walked briskly toward the men's bathroom.
Wally Aronson had spent the past two hours and twenty-nine minutes in a landfill twelve miles outside of Berlin. Old Markus had led the station chief and a team of six FBI evidence technicians into the site, and Old Markus was still there, a rented van at his back and an ancient Mauser rifle in his arms. Old Markus had an acute sense of where the Brandenburg evidence had been dumped; he had taken pictures of the trucks during daylight hours. Wally clipped the chain-link metal fence and removed a section large enough for the team's infiltration. Spotlights were out of the question. So was extensive examination of the evidence. The Bureau people had decided simply to cart the largest pieces out of the landfill in the hired van for testing at a remote location: an abandoned U.S. Army base in what had once been the Western Sector of Berlin.
The mood among the collection team — four men and two women — was somber. What evidence they might succeed in retrieving would never be admissible in court; it was tainted by removal from the bomb site. But the clandestine trip had helped the frustrated Forensics people put their time to use. And the larger pieces might reveal something of value — stress patterns, fractures, explosive residues — that would shape the FBI's investigation of the bombing. The darkness and disorder of the dump, however, banished all hope of finding anything small.
Like the timing device of a bomb.
Wally and the others were tense, waiting for a klaxon alarm, the release of dogs and floodlights, or the disappearance of one of their number into a mountain of stinking refuse. Wally had the most to lose: While the Forensics people would merely be sent home on the next available plane, Wally, as station chief, could be publicly humiliated if he were caught. But the landfill was deserted. Whoever had ordered the evidence removed from the Brandenburg Gate had not troubled with it further.
Wally tucked his cell phone back into the pocket of his black windbreaker. He had never heard Anatoly Rubikov sound so desperate; he would have to drive back to the Hauptbahnhof right now.
“Markus,” he told the foreign-service national, “I'm counting on you, buddy. See that these people get back to the ranch, okay?”
Sirens were wailing but the police had not yet arrived by the time Wally reached the train station. A kid in black leather was crouched in the doorway of the men's bathroom, groaning as though he was going to vomit. Wally stepped over him and saw the blood just beyond his black-jeaned legs, the corpse in a heap by the open stall door. “Scheisse,” he muttered in German.
Anatoly had been stabbed. The thin-bladed knife was still buried in his chest.
The boy in leather hadn't done it, Wally knew that. The bathroom window was open. Whoever had cut his Joe to the heart must have left that way. Wally studied the Russian safecracker, the sprawl of his limbs, the way he had fallen, and resisted the impulse to close Anatoly's eyes.